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slim
Premium
join:2001-02-13
Arlington, VA
| Trademark Law
As a trademark attorney, the names dont have to be THAT similiar in this case. There is a two part test used for "confusingly similar". The first is the sound, appearance and meaning of the two marks. The second is the market for the goods/services, how they are sold/presented to consumers etc. (this is a very very basic overview).
When the services are exactly similar like they are here, the marks can be further apart in similarity and still be "confusingly similar".
This is not legal advice and is only my personal opinion, but the Vonage people are right to sue and I think have a very strong case.
I think the title of this article on BBR is misleading as it makes it sound as if this is some sort of ridiculous lawsuit when if they were my client (and I think 95% of tradmark lawyers would agree) I would tell Vonage to do the exact same thing.
You have to protect your brand.
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icecold976
join:2002-07-20
Orlando, FL | aka. google v. booble. | |
jekler
join:2000-11-23
Cincinnati, OH
clubs:
| reply to slim
I have to agree that the core issue here is that the two companies are competing in the same industry. If they were different industries, the difference in the name would be completely negligible, simply because if you're looking for a car, you wouldn't be fooled into buying VoIP service. But they are both competing for the same customers, if you're looking for VoIP service, it can easily be argued that someone looking for Vonage might end up with CallVantage with the belief that "It's what I was looking for, I just got the name mixed up."
I do a lot of usability testing when I'm developing software, things that seem to be distinct differences end up confusing people in practice. For a practical example, more than half of the people using one of my game interfaces were frequently confused by the "Help" button and the "Customer Support" button. It doesn't seem like a big issue to tech-savvy folk, but it is a significant issue when the user in question isn't (and has no desire to be) tech-savvy. People who aren't tech-savvy don't draw as fine a line as we do. "Vonage/Vantage, whatever... the internet phone thingy."
From tech support experience in the past, there's plenty of times I've talked to customers who don't draw a distinction between their monitor, tower, modem, and router. They're all just 'The Box'. And these are the same people who can be tricked.
The name also starts a logical progression towards confusion. Sure you officially name it "CallVantage", and somewhere down the road you start running commercials that say "Get the Vantage!" dropping the "Call" part of it. | |
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