Fraud In Trademarks
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has recently given a little bit of relief to trademark owners. For a number of years the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was canceling trademark registrations for "fraud" if any of the information was inaccurate. The most dangerous was the date of first use of the mark. This led many to claim a later date than for which they had actual use just to protect against potentially invalidating their registration. In In re Bose Corporation the Federal Circuit found that the TTAB had been misapplying the standard. Not only do you have to show that the information is inaccurate, you have to show that there was an intent to deceive. The Federal Circuit's analysis makes more sense and will give a little breathing room in case of inadvertent errors.







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