Two identical tradenames do not necessarily infringe on each other. The test is the likelihood of customer confusion. Would a mattress buyer be likely to think IBM was behind a Serta iSeries? Would a computer buyer impute Serta's reputation to an IBM iSeries?
The question has gotten tougher in recent years. Fifty years ago you probably could have called a clothing line Coke or MacDonald's, but now every company wants their brand known in every line of business. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of zMan Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2012 6:37 PM To: [email protected] Subject: iSeries Does IBM know about this: http://www.goodbed.com/mattress-line/serta-iseries/ Surely iSeries was trademarked?! Of course, Monster Cable has/had a "zseries" at the same time that IBM did. They owned the domain zseries.com, although they never used it (it seems to be owned but not in use by a squatter now). -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
