Opinion ID: 786737
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Tandy

Text: 6 Tandy is largest nationwide retailer of consumer electronics. Through its 7,186 Radio Shack outlets, it reported $4.1 billion in sales in 1999. As a marketing tactic, Radio Shack pursued a store within a store concept: it physically grouped its core target products into separate sections within its retail outlets. For example, within a Radio Shack outlet a consumer might find a Sprint Communications Store, an RCA Digital Entertainment Center, a Microsoft Information Center, and a Compaq Creative learning center. At some point in the mid-1990s, Radio Shack sought to create a store-within-a-store for one of its primary anchors — the business of connecting things, which includes batteries, power supplies, cords, connectors, and resistors. Joint Appendix (J.A.) at 168 (David Edmondson Dep.). Market research conducted by Radio Shack demonstrated that consumers preferred POWERZONE as the name for the new power-related store-within-a-store. Before launching the POWERZONE concept, Radio Shack hired a trademark search firm, which discovered a Georgia business that used the POWERZONE mark and sold various types of batteries. Radio Shack purchased the rights to the POWERZONE mark from this firm and began using the mark on July 2, 1998. 7 The POWERZONE mark features the word PowerZone, spelled with a capital P and a capital Z, bookended by graphic elements consisting of same-sized diagonal lines slanting to the right. The word PowerZone generally appears on a clearly defined, cylindrical object that closely resembles a battery and is centered in between the slanted lines moving outward from the battery. The words Radio Shack and an R with a circle around it, which is a Radio Shack trademark, also appear on the battery. In some advertisements, the battery, containing the word PowerZone and the Radio Shack mark, appears without the slanted lines. Additionally, in some advertisements, the word PowerZone is depicted without any accompanying graphics. The POWERZONE mark almost always appears in black and white. However, in color advertisements, the word PowerZone is written in white, and the battery has a coppery yellow-orange color. 8 With limited exceptions, Radio Shack uses POWERZONE either as a complement to or in close physical proximity with the Radio Shack name and the Radio Shack house mark, such that a consumer would be unlikely to see one without the other whether in advertising or at an actual Radio Shack outlet. AutoZone uncovered at least one example in which POWERZONE appeared without the accompanying Radio Shack mark on Radio Shack's website. In this example, the words Radio Shack and RadioShack.com appear multiple times in close proximity to the word POWERZONE, and a consumer would not see the word POWERZONE without either purposely going to or being directed to RadioShack.com.