Opinion ID: 178122
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Distinctive and Confusingly Similar

Text: Nahum's second argument is that there was no evidence from which a jury could conclude that www.eq-Italy. com was a distinctive mark, or that it was confusingly similar to DSPT's EQ mark. The latter point is meritless, since the evidence showed that only DSPT used the mark EQ for a men's shirts line, and used the Italian fashion connection as a selling point. Even though DSPT had not registered the EQ mark, ownership of common law trademark is obtained by actual use of a symbol to identify the goods or services of one seller and distinguish them from those offered by others. [24] The evidence shows that DSPT used the mark in commerce in fall 1999, when it exhibited EQ at the New York fashion shows [25] and thereafter used the EQ symbol. Although Nahum showed that others used an EQ mark in subsequent years for other sorts of goods, such as online publications, engine cylinder heads, and bicycles, no one would likely confuse these goods with DSPT's. [26] The only other use that was even arguably confusingly similar was EQ equestrian clothing, but the jury could conclude that retailers shopping for men's shirts are unlikely to be confused by a mark also used for equestrian clothing, and that the style in which the marks were displayed was too different to foster confusion. The shirts were marked by the letters EQ, whereas the equestrian apparel was marked by a rectangle inside another rectangle. As for whether eq-Italy.com is confusingly similar [27] to EQ, a jury could reasonably conclude that in the context of men's shirts, it was. The jury could have concluded that, at the time Nahum used it, the mark was distinctive and his use of the site after leaving DSPT would confuse retailers trying to shop DSPT's catalog at the website where they had done so before. [28] In fact, as Dorigo testified, several customers were actually confused by the alteration of the website. Now, people would still call and say, what happened? Where is it? You know, they wanted to know what's this screen? By 2005, eq-Italy.com was identified with EQ and Equilibrio. The similarity of EQ and eq-Italy is considerably greater than perfumebay.com and ebay.com, which we held were similar, and thus the jury's finding should be upheld. [29]