Can you use a trademarked name in an advertisement [Updated]

Last updated : Aug 1, 2022

Can you use a competitor's name in an advertisement?

Under U.S. law, use of a competitor's trademark in accurate and non-deceptive comparative advertising is legal and does not constitute trademark infringement.

Do you need permission to use brand names?

By law, you need not request permission to use a trademark belonging to another if it is for an editorial or informational use. Trademark law protects distinctive words, phrases, logos, symbols, slogans, and any other devices used to identify and distinguish products or services in the marketplace.

When can you use a brand name?

You Can't Use Any Business Name You Want A trademark is the exclusive right to use a brand name, logo, or tagline. And there are millions of trademarks.

What constitutes fair use of a trademark?

In the context of trademarks, “fair use” is the term given to the use of someone else's trademark in a way that will not subject the user to liability for infringing the owner's rights. Fair use is a defense to a claim of trademark infringement.

Is it legal to use your competitor name as a keyword?

Is it legal to use competitors names in your keywords? In a nutshell, yes. Google has quite a simple set of search advertising guidelines that cover issues including trademarks, and it is the protection offered by trademarks that is key to this discussion.

What happens if I use a trademarked name?

Using a registered trademark without permission from the owner can lead to a trademark infringement lawsuit.

What happens if someone uses your trademark name?

If the person or entity receives your letter and continues to use your trademark, it's time to file a lawsuit. The suit will get filed in federal court if it spans more than one state. If the infringement is local, it may get filed in a state court.

Can I put a Nike logo on a shirt for personal use?

In fact, copyright and trademark violations can in some cases lead to criminal charges. Selling shirts with copyrighted images isn't impossible, but you should never use someone else's logos on your T-shirts or other clothing without their explicit permission.

What is considered trademark infringement?

Trademark infringement is the unauthorized use of a trademark or service mark on or in connection with goods and/or services in a manner that is likely to cause confusion, deception, or mistake about the source of the goods and/or services.

How do you violate a trademark?

Breaking Down The Elements. To prevail on a claim of trademark infringement, a plaintiff must establish that it has a valid mark entitled to protection; and that the defendant used the same or a similar mark in commerce in connection with the sale or advertising of goods or services without the plaintiff's consent.

Can I use a trademark before it is registered?

Use or file trademark first? You do not have to apply for a trademark prior to using it. In most cases, trademark rights in the US are granted to the first one who uses a mark in commerce on particular goods or services. US trademark law recognizes the first user.

Do trademarks fall under fair use?

The fair use doctrine, consistent with the First Amendment, allows a person to use another's trademark either in its non-trademark, descriptive sense to describe the user's own products (classic, or descriptive, fair use) or in its trademark sense to refer to the trademark owner or its product (nominative fair use).

What are the most common defenses to trademark infringement?

The most common defenses in trademark infringement, unfair competition and trademark dilution suits include descriptive fair use, nominative fair use, laches, unclean hands and trademark misuse, fraud in obtaining the registration, and application of the First Amendment.

What are some examples of fair use?

Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship. Fair use provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor test.

Can I use brand names in my Google Ads?

Ad Copy. Google only allows the brand holder, resellers, and informational sites to use the trademark in the ad title or ad text. Resellers can use trademark in the ad copy as long as the ad's landing page is primarily dedicated to selling products or services corresponding to the trademark.

Can you use brand names in keywords?

By using your brand name as a keyword, their ad could potentially show up on the SERP when someone is searching for your specific company. Unfortunately, you can't do much of anything about the competitor using your brand name or trademarks as a keyword.

Can you use competitors names in Amazon keywords?

Just scroll to the product details of your competitor's listing, copy the ASIN, and type it into the search bar. The tool will display all the relevant keywords used by your competitor for the product.

Can the same name be trademarked twice?

However, if the two products are not related to one another and not likely to cause any confusion, then trademark law will not prevent the two companies from using the same name. Put differently, if the same name is registered in different trademark classes, this does not give rise to an infringement claim.

Can 2 businesses have the same name?

Can Two Companies Have the Same Name? Yes, however, certain requirements must be met in order for it to not constitutes trademark infringement and to determine which party is the rightful owner of the name.

Can a company sue you for having the same name?

Trademark Registration Then, the owner can face a lawsuit for using the same name as someone else even if the second party registered a trademark for the company after the first owner created the company. These situations usually require the services of a lawyer to both understand and pursue.

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can you use a trademark before it's approved by the uspto the short answer is yes hi i'm jason roslin intellectual property attorney protecting my clients products their brands and their businesses from getting ripped off in this video i'll go through a couple of questions here on quora that relate to trademarks so first one as i said can you use a trademark before it's approved by the uspto and the answer is yes however it's always a good idea to conduct a search a full clearance search to make sure that you're not infringing on another's rights right now at the time of taping this it's august 2022 you're looking at about a seven to nine month wait between the time of that you file an application and it actually gets reviewed by an examining attorney at the u.s patent and trademark office so you won't know what their conflicting marc search comes up that being said is even if you go through the trademark offers clearly there still could be an issue with another company out there that they might feel you're infringing on them so it's always good before you ever use a trademark whether it's business name product name a slogan a logo that you at least conduct a clearance search next question can i trademark a business name not registered with the uspto it's not my business but the name is perfect for my business the question is 100 clear but you can file for any name you want at the uspto it doesn't have to be your business name you could always do business under assumed name and in the us in most states or counties you have to file something as a doing business to let the state know that you're doing business under something other than your actual business name um that being said is i don't know what else the the question wants i made an uncorrectable error on my trademark application i'm going to spend a new one to correct that they don't have to waste their time looking at that one how can i get the usb to miss the dismiss the previous application okay so once you file an application it's very limited in what you can do in terms of amendments to that application so sometimes there are errors that are uncorrectable and the only way to correct it is by filing a new application what you can do is file an express abandonment of that application what i would suggest probably depends upon what the uncorrectable error is but sometimes there's an additional statement you can at least just write wait until you file the new application to then file for the express abandonment but while you have that one pending you might want to just uh state that you also own that application so next question what happens if a company's trademark is pending and i start a company with a similar similar name during that time so there's a few things you look at for likelihood of confusion or infringement and one of them is the mark itself the brand the name and also the types of goods or services so if they're completely unrelated and there's no relation whatsoever then you might be fine now of course that's very fact dependent uh but if it's for all assuming for assume for the purposes of answering this question that it is the same type of a business and that there would be likely to confusion so what happens if your trademark is pending and i start a company with a similar name grant time depending upon what type of trademark it is if it's based on use meaning they had a prior use when they filed the application they're going to have priority and use over you and if they came after you they would most likely win out whether it's a lawsuit or whether you decide to file a application after them if they file what's called an intent to use and they don't have use yet that date of that intent to use application acts as their constructive use date meaning should they actually prove use at a later date and get a registration their priority date goes back to the date of filing meaning if anyone uses it after that date they would be infringing but if you were using it before that date you might have priority over them so if it's a just a pending application for an intent to use and you started a business with the same name you can either wait and see what happens do they ever file their statement of use does their application get rejected you know could get rejected for a lot of reasons that they never obtain a registration but you have to consider are you going to start building your brand now knowing that this is over your head that you have to think about that um you know do you want to spend a year two years building a brand spending money and investing time and effort into this brand and then they get their registration and you receive a cease and desist letter so just some of the things to think about please again in the comments or reach out to us let us know if you like this format for answering some quick questions here and feel free to subscribe and you can always reach out to us at jhrlegal.com thanks

Thanks for your comment Errol Kolb, have a nice day.
- Alfonzo Burtle, Staff Member

hi Andy Nelson so I was in the grocery store last week walked out put my groceries away looked over at the cart returned and I saw this sign right here so you might want to push pause for a quick second take a look at this okay so what we have here we saw a better-tasting lite beer then michelob ultra and has a picture of saint archer gold which i think is least a local california beer I'm not sure if it's everywhere else but basically it's a diet beer okay and we all know michelob ultra is also a diet beer so when I saw that it made me think about my childhood I didn't a lot of you probably saw what I saw which is something called the Pepsi challenge which is a commercial on TV and you'd see people from the street walking up and invited to try a few different colas and pick which one they liked better and then it was the Pepsi challenge so as you can imagine there was the big reveal each time and so many people are surprised they chose Pepsi over coke and of course Pepsi uses to demonstrate or at least impress upon people if they have a better taste in Cola what we know as comparative advertising and over the years I've always been asked how can I do how can they do that how can they use Coke in their commercial that sort of thing think about it you see comparative advertising all the time and why do people do it because it's freakin awesome right it's really effective if done right and in fact it would be kind of ridiculous if the rule was you could not refer to your competitors trademarks let's say a Pepsi said hey today we're gonna have you know invite a number of people off the street to try our Pepsi versus a competitor's Cola that comes in a red can with white scripted lettering we're not gonna say what it is for fear that ringgit sued but that's you know you have to kind of infer what it is but that'd be kind of stupid and really there's no rule because remember trademark laws protect consumers from confusion in the marketplace they want to know where they're getting their products and when you refer to a competitor's product accurately you're not creating confusion so so naturally there is no problem so comparative advertising use of a competitor's marks that way is fair however there are some things you want to think about while you're doing it one want to make sure you don't butcher the competitors marks in some way you know mangle them different colors or whatever you mean you just you want to use it accurately number one - if if you use in comparative advertising you're gonna be making claims about something this one is a better tasting beard now that one is what we call puffing which is kind of like I'm the best beer on the planet kind of thing I don't know if you can really reduce that to some kind of scientific method just determine whether that's true or not so that sort of thing and probably okay I'm better than they are you know that kind of because consumers don't really then expect that to be nicely necessarily provable but you say I have 20% 25% fewer calories than coca-cola or something like that you better be ready to back that up if you got called to the carpet so don't mangle the marks use them accurately and don't be deceptive in some way and I don't have a good example for that but you know don't get too cute where you you know do something deceptive which is also you know along the same lines of make sure your claims are accurate and then ultimately I talked I talked about confusion a few months ago don't do anything that would sort of cause confusion or affiliation or something that wouldn't call or cause rather consumers to believe there's a connection or an affiliation you know make it clear that your competitors right you're not coming from the same source so there's more to it than that but but I know people always have this question which is how can they do that how can they talk about someone else think about it it happens all the time another one real quick before I get you off on this video is out here I think Best Buy is a retailer that's all over the US or has been and there was also a at least one in California called Fry's and I think there are in other states as well and Fry's used to run a funny little ad years ago on the radio and he used to say your best buys are always at Fry's not exactly comparative advertising not exactly using best buys trademark because they use it in a very descriptive sense to say your best buys put on the last very close to pushing the not deceptive not really comparative advertising unless you're kind of saying you're you know we're the better buy than Best Buy's I don't know anyway I'm circling the drain on that one that's just kind of a clever advertising method that they use that wasn't quite comparative advertising but certainly push the line anyway if you have questions about this video comparative advertising use of another competitor or competitor's trademark feel free to shoot me a message I look forward to talking to you soon bye bye

Thanks Clayton your participation is very much appreciated
- Alfonzo Burtle

About the author

Alfonzo Burtle

I've studied spacecraft design at University of New England in Biddeford and I am an expert in housing policy. I usually feel ashamed. My previous job was motor vehicle inspector I held this position for 22 years, I love talking about skydiving and barbecuing. Huge fan of Matt Damon I practice windsurfing and collect bobbleheads.