I don't know much about trademark law but I hear about these cases all the time. Someone owns a trademark and accuses someone else of stealing it or hurting. Bang! Lawsuit. The lawyers rack up their fees and make a fortune and maybe someone else gets some money. Okay, to be fair to the lawyers, they don't start these crazy lawsuits. They just represent the clients.
Here is what caught my attention. In Mocean Group is suing CostCo for selling Anne Cole swimsuits. I don't buy swimwear at CostCo but I hardly ever see it there. CostCo has moved into selling its fall merchandise but if they have any swimwear left it's not listed on their website.
It seems to me that if you want to stop CostCo from selling products you should do it while they are in season. Or was CostCo planning to sell Anne Cole swimwear next year? Is this lawsuit ahead of its time?
Maybe an even crazier lawsuit is this one where Gatorade is suing Haterade. What is Haterade? It's a nutritional supplement guys take to boost their testosterone. I have no idea if it works. You can see it here unless they take that page offline. I don't see how anyone is going to think it's the green drink we all grew up with.
Haterade is also urban slang about being in a negative, hateful mood. I don't see why anyone would want to name a nutritional drink "haterade" so maybe the Gatorade guys are doing them a favor.
How common are these trademark lawsuits? I guess they happen all the time.
You can find a list of 71 notorious patent, trademark, and copyright infringement lawsuits on this website. That is an awful lot of crazy talk. Get this: Sarah Palin couldn't trademark her own name because she forgot to sign it. And she was almost elected Vice President of the United States!
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