Fergie's Tech Blog

Federal Circuit Rejects Trademark Protection for Lawyers.com Website

Robert Loblaw writes on the Decision of the Day Blog:

Here’s an interesting intellectual property decision involving a legal website. The lawyers out there are undoubtedly familiar with Martindale-Hubbell, which operates a massive database with contact information and brief biographies of lawyers across the country.

Its parent company, Reed Elselvier, has expanded the database service in recent years and now provides various online tools for the public at the website http://www.lawyers.com/.

The company then tried to register “lawyers.com” as a trademark, but the Patent and Trademark Office rejected it as generic. The company fares no better with the Federal Circuit, which wastes little time in affirming the PTO’s decision.

posted by Fergie @ 4/12/2007 01:01:00 PM