The District Court of Georgia recently waded into the fields of linguistics and statistics in Reinalt-Thomas Corporation , d/b/a Discount Tire v. Mavis Tire Supply, LLC. Reinalt-Thomas Tire Corporation (RTC) sued Mavis Tire Supply (Mavis) for trademark infringement caused by Mavis’ retail outfit, Mavis Discount Tires. The mark, DISCOUNT TIRE, was featured in about a billion…
What a long and winding road it’s been trying to decode the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Examination Guide 4-19, its subsequent revision, and the further revisions that are likely to come. When the original version of 4-19 came out on August 3rd, it caused an uproar in the trademark law community, mostly because of a…