Trademarks Law – A Field For Your Consideration

One of my career aspirations is to be a Trademarks Examiner at the Patent and Trademark Office.  So I guess you could say I’m trying to make trademarks my niche, the best dish in my food truck of legal knowledge, if you will. You have to love the aesthetic nature of it all, the analytical maze that you navigate to determine if a mark is eligible to be trademarked.  Although I see the arena of Trademark Law like a freshman Longhorn sees Darrell K. Royal, the subject may actually still be a bit lackluster…much like my perspective on Constitutional Law.

Instead of catching you up on new developments in the field this week, I thought we should ease up on the information overload and have a good time!

Here are just a few reasons why I love Trademark Law so much and why I think you should too:

1. Who doesn’t like to draw? Even if you’re on the stick-figure-with-balloon-shaped-heads level like I am, you still doodle once in awhile. Trademarks are much like doodles.  Someone had a business idea and was thinking of a name, symbol, or logo to represent that business. They started jotting down some ideas that were floating around until the cliché ‘AHA!’ moment finally hit, and now you get to use your 6-figure degree to analyze whether the business owner’s creation can be protected by trademark laws! (Note: if you’re interested in working with actual bodies of art, the Picassos and Rowlings, that’s copyrights –we largely stick to marks around these parts.)
2. What other field involves this degree of creativity? Labor Law? ‘Not I’, said the EEOC. Copyrights? Ok, yeah. Copyrights is cool, but Trademarks is so much more unique. You’re going to look at marks that may differ only in font or only in phonetics, inter alia. It forces you to be meticulous and determine if that wavy S on the end of Bobby Joe’s mark, that just so happens to be on the end of Wanda Roy’s mark, is enough to make the two confusingly similar. What types of businesses are being represented? How do the marks sound? How different are they in appearance? Ultimately, your concern as a trademarks attorney is to protect consumers from being exposed to a variety of similar marks that may cause confusion in the marketplace or capitalization off of another business owner’s good will.
3. There’s something for everyone. Trademarks Law covers nuances in the composition of body styles for vehicles to the design of dresses and shoes. (YES! THE YSL case!!) For example, Bentley sued the manufacturers of a “Bentley Body Kit” for imitating the inherently distinctive shape of Bentley vehicles under Trade Dress laws, which is a segment of Trademarks Law.
4. Trademarks attorneys are just so frikkin’ nice. Seriously. What pleasant-natured people we are.

On a completely separate note, if you’re ever in the DMV area in September, look into DC Art All Night. The talent in the Wonderbread Warehouse this year was nothing less than palpable. If this intrigues you, you probably enjoy art to some degree.  And if you’re on this site, then you have some interest in the law.  So why not combine the two and pursue a career in trademarks? (heh heh see what I did there?) Sure, there’s this large amount of standard character format (non-stylized text) marks that you analyze as well, but those are pretty neat too!

For more information about trademarks and possibly registering your own mark, visit the USPTO’s website.

Gena.

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Gena Thomas, a recent graduate of Howard University School of Law, was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, she enjoys watching scary movies and acquiring calories from chocolates of all sorts.

Featured image courtesy of [opensource.com via Flickr]

Gena Thomas

Gena Thomas, a recent graduate of Howard University School of Law, was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, she enjoys watching scary movies and acquiring calories from chocolates of all sorts. Contact Gena at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.