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The Trademark Reporter
Current Issue
This issue offers readers a first for The Trademark Reporter: an article co-authored by a neuroscientist and a brand lawyer on how neuroscience can make a unique contribution to understanding trademarks and how they function and perhaps provide practitioners with new tools for measuring trademark significance. The issue also includes a provocative article proposing the elimination of the separate Lanham Act provisions for geographical marks because of the so-called “Google effects” on human memory, which the author argues have rendered the “generally known geographic location” test meaningless.
When we launder our desire for civil rights and equality through the lens of branding culture, everything, even resistance, becomes commodified.
Sonia K. Katyal, Berkeley Law School, USA Brands Behaving Badly, 109 TMR 827–28 (2019)
Trademarks and the Brain: Neuroscience and the Processing of Non-literal Language
Author: Sandra M. Virtue, PhD, and Darren S. Cahr
In this first-ever TMR article to be co-authored by a neuroscientist and a brand lawyer, the authors explore whether recent advances in neuroscience provide a more meaningful understanding of trademarks and how they function, beyond the results of self-reported consumer surveys and linguistic analyses.
U.S. Law of Geographical Trademarks, “Google Effects,” Historical Developments, and U.S. International Obligations: Proposal for Changes to the Lanham Act
Author: Marketa Trimble
This article proposes the elimination of the separate Lanham Act provisions for geographical marks. The author tracks the increasing difficulty of categorizing a mark as geographical because of the so-called “Google effects” on human memory, which the author argues have rendered the “generally known geographic location” test meaningless.
