KateSo, I’m flipping through the magazine du jour, trying to relax when there it is: an add for the Visa Black Card, which has a little TM symbol next to it. Hmmm…. I think. Didn’t they just blatantly rip that off of American Express?
Turns out AMEX never registered it. Yes, yes, I hear you shouting: “Even if you don’t register a trademark, you should have a common law right to use it!” The problem here is apparently that American Express never called or marketed their black card as the “Black Card”. So, they didn’t “use” it? Instead, they call theirs The Centurion Card. It was only popular culture — movies, rappers, moguls, and the like – that called The Cenurion Card the Black Card. So American Express never “used” that name. Thus, they’d be hard pressed to prove rights. They also never secured the domain name so another couldn’t use it. Oooops.
So, along comes Visa and swoops it up, sticks a TM on it and gets the domain name www.blackcard.com.
So far it looks like AMEX is silent.
Lesson learned…. look out for what people call your product — it maybe a better name than what you used.
