{"id":88,"date":"2016-06-24T12:12:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T16:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2016-06-25T12:48:48","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T16:48:48","slug":"a-mark-should-be-considered-a-whole-and-not-dissected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"A Mark Should be Considered a Whole, and not Dissected"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Oakville Hills Cellar, Inc. v. Georgallis Holdings, LLC<\/em>, [2016-1103] the Federal Circuit affirmed the TTAB’s\u00a0finding that Oakville\u2019s\u00a0registered mark MAYA and Georgallis\u2019s applied-for mark\u00a0MAYARI are sufficiently dissimilar.<\/p>\n

The Federla Circuit expalined that the likelihood of confusion analysis considers
\nall DuPont factors for which there is record evidence\u00a0but may focus on dispositive factors, such as\u00a0similarity of the marks and relatedness of the goods.<\/p>\n

Oakville complained that the\u00a0Board overlooked record evidence of the marks\u2019 similarities\u00a0in appearance, pronunciation, meaning, and overall\u00a0commercial impression. Oakville argued that\u00a0MAYA dominated both marks, and that the suffix -RI in\u00a0MAYARI is of minor import as a distinguishing element,\u00a0particularly with the registered mark MAYA entirely\u00a0subsumed within the leading portion of MAYARI, which\u00a0could cause confusion.<\/p>\n

Georgallis responds that the Board correctly declined\u00a0to dissect MAYARI into MAYA and RI, an element with\u00a0no meaning, and instead found that consumers would\u00a0perceive MAYARI as a unitary whole and a coined term.\u00a0According to Georgallis, the Board properly considered\u00a0the marks in their entireties and found that MAYA is\u00a0familiar to U.S. consumers as a reference to the Mayan\u00a0culture and as a popular female given name, whereas\u00a0MAYARI is unfamiliar to U.S. consumers.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit\u00a0concluded that substantial evidence supports the
\nBoard\u2019s finding that the marks were sufficiently\u00a0dissimilar as to appearance, sound, meaning, and commercial\u00a0impression. The Federal Circuit said that in determining similarity or dissimilarity,\u00a0the marks must be compared in their entireties.\u00a0The Federal Circuit said that Board properly\u00a0found that there is insufficient evidence that consumers\u00a0would perceive MAYARI as MAYA- and -RI, agree with the Board that the letters RI, alone, have no relevant meaning, and\u00a0provide no reason for a customer to view the mark\u00a0logically as MAYA plus RI, rather than as a single unitary\u00a0expression. \u00a0The Federal Circuit said that there no reason to break the term into MAYA-RI than\u00a0MAY-ARI or\u00a0MA-YARI.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit said that\u00a0a single DuPont factor\u00a0may be dispositive in a likelihood of confusion analysis,\u00a0especially when that single factor is the dissimilarity of\u00a0the marks. \u00a0The Federal Circuit affirmed\u00a0the decision of
\nthe Board dismissing Oakville\u2019s opposition.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Oakville Hills Cellar, Inc. v. Georgallis Holdings, LLC, [2016-1103] the Federal Circuit affirmed the TTAB’s\u00a0finding that Oakville\u2019s\u00a0registered mark MAYA and Georgallis\u2019s applied-for mark\u00a0MAYARI are sufficiently dissimilar. The Federla Circuit expalined that the likelihood of confusion analysis considers all DuPont … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-likelihood-of-confusion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trademarks.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}