Injunction

A detailed Summary of Injunction

CBS Broadcasting, Inc. v. VanityMail Services, Inc.

Federal Trademark Infringement- Likelihood of Consumer Confusion (Lanham Act S43(a))

a) Section 4 (a) provides that the plaintiff must prove the following: 1) that the defendant's domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the plaintiff has rights; and 2) the defendant has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and 3) the domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

Under this section of the act, the court must first evaluate whether or not the defendant's domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the plaintiff has rights. In evaluating the likelihood of confusion, the court may look at a variety of factors. Some of these may include: similarity of sight, sound or meaning between marks, the strength of the plaintiff's mark, the defendant's intent or bad faith in adopting a similar mark, the proximity or relatedness of goods, instances of consumers' actual confusion, marketing channels, the sophistication of goods, and the likelihood of expansion.

The marks in question are identical in sound, meaning and sp

b) For the above-stated reasons, the plaintiff should not be granted preliminary injunction on the basis of this claim. GoTo.com, Inc., v. The Walt Disney Company, found that "...use of remarkably similar trademarks on different web sites creates a likelihood of confusion amongst Web users." Federal trademark infringement guidelines state that the plaintiff must establish all 3 requirements listed above. The plaintiff is able to prove that 1) the mark is identical and 2) that the defendant has no rights or legitimate interests in the name but fails to meet the third requirement. Though the name is registered, there is no proof that it is being used in bad faith. Thus preliminary injunction should not be granted under the Lanham Act S43(a).

Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 (Lanham Act S43 (c))

a) This section of the Lanham Act differs from section 43 (a) in that it made the notion of dilution a federal-law concern. Section 43 (c) does not require competition between parties and a likelihood of confusion to present a claim for relief. The standards for measuring dilution are quite different from those of likelihood of confusion.

As for sophistication, any competent computer user may be able to access a web site. The GoTo case also found that "Navigating amongst web sites involves practically no effort whatsoever, and arguments that Web users exercise a great deal of care before clicking hyperlinks is unconvincing."

The two parties do share the same marketing channels. In GoTo.com, Inc., v. The Walt Disney Company, the plaintiff sought a preliminary injunction because Defendant's commercially used logo on the World Wide Web was remarkably similar to Plaintiff's. The court found that, "the Web, as a marketing channel, is particularly susceptible to a likelihood of confusion since, ...it allows for competing marks to be encountered at the same time, on the same screen."

b) The court must first look at whether or not Plaintiff's mark is in

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Approximate Word count = 1332
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics