Opinion ID: 745484
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unregistered Trademark Infringement

Text: 13 Section 43(a) may protect[ ] an unregistered trademark ... against infringement. Grupke v. Linda Lori Sportswear, Inc., 921 F.Supp. 987, 994 (E.D.N.Y.1996) (citing Coach Leatherware Co. v. AnnTaylor, Inc., 933 F.2d 162, 168 (2d Cir.1991)). [T]he general principles qualifying a mark for registration under § 2 of the Lanham Act are for the most part applicable in determining whether an unregistered mark is entitled to protection under § 43(a). Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 U.S. 763, 768, 112 S.Ct. 2753, 2757, 120 L.Ed.2d 615 (1992). 14 Thus, Genesee will prevail on the merits of its unregistered trademark infringement claim if it can show that it has a valid [trade]mark entitled to protection and that the defendant's use of it is likely to cause confusion. Arrow Fastener Co. v. Stanley Works, 59 F.3d 384, 390 (2d Cir.1995) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We agree with the district court that Genesee does not have a trademark in the words Honey Brown that can be protected against appropriation by Stroh. Accordingly, we affirm without reaching the question of likelihood of confusion. 15 A trademark is any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof used by a person to identify and distinguish his or her goods, including a unique product, from those manufactured or sold by others and to indicate the source of the goods, even if that source is unknown. 15 U.S.C. § 1127. [F]ollowing the classic formulation set out by Judge Friendly, trademarks are divided into five general categories of distinctiveness: 1) generic; 2) descriptive; 3) suggestive; 4) arbitrary; and 5) fanciful. Two Pesos, Inc., 505 U.S. at 768, 112 S.Ct. at 2757 (citing Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting World, Inc., 537 F.2d 4, 9 (2d Cir.1976)). A generic mark is generally a common description of goods, W.W.W. Pharmaceutical Co. v. Gillette Co., 984 F.2d 567, 572 (2d Cir.1993), one that refers, or has come to be understood as referring, to the genus of which the particular product is a species, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. v. Hunting World, Inc., 537 F.2d 4, 9 (2d Cir.1976). A descriptive mark describes a product's features, qualities or ingredients in ordinary language, W.W.W. Pharmaceutical Co., 984 F.2d at 572, or describes the use to which a product is put, Hasbro, 858 F.2d at 73 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). A suggestive mark employs terms which do not describe but merely suggest the features of the product, requiring the purchaser to use imagination, thought and perception to reach a conclusion as to the nature of goods. W.W.W. Pharmaceutical Co., 984 F.2d at 572 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). [T]he term 'fanciful', as a classifying concept, is usually applied to words invented solely for their use as trademarks. When the same legal consequences attach to a common word, i.e., when it is applied in an unfamiliar way, the use is called 'arbitrary.'  Abercrombie & Fitch, 537 F.2d at 11 n. 12. 16 Marks that are arbitrary, fanciful, or suggestive are considered inherently distinctive, and are automatically entitled to protection under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1051, et seq. See Two Pesos, 505 U.S. at 768, 112 S.Ct. at 2757. Marks that are descriptive are entitled to protection only if they have acquired a secondary meaning in the marketplace. Id. at 769, 112 S.Ct. at 2757-58. 4 Generic marks are never entitled to trademark protection. See Abercrombie & Fitch, 537 F.2d at 9 ([N]o matter how much money and effort the user of a generic term has poured into promoting the sale of its merchandise and what success it has achieved in securing public identification, it cannot deprive competing manufacturers of the product of the right to call an article by its name.). 17 The district court found that Honey Brown is generic, and hence automatically ineligible for protection. That classification is a fact-bound determination, and so long as the district court utilized the correct legal standard, see, e.g., Hasbro, 858 F.2d at 74 (reversing a district court's classification because the court had misapplied the law), it will be upheld unless clearly erroneous, see Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. McNeil-P.P.C., Inc., 973 F.2d 1033, 1039-40 (2d Cir.1992). 18 Genesee argues that the district court, by basing its conclusion that Honey Brown is generic solely on the framework laid out in the Third Circuit's opinion in A.J. Canfield Co. v. Honickman, 808 F.2d 291 (3d Cir.1986) (Becker, J.), rather than on the primary significance test used in this circuit, employed the wrong legal standard. We reject this contention. 19 The primary significance test is the law of the land; it was adopted by the Supreme Court in Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U.S. 111, 118, 59 S.Ct. 109, 113, 83 L.Ed. 73 (1938), and subsequently codified by Congress in the Trademark Clarification Act of 1984, Pub.L. No. 98-620, § 102, 98 Stat. 3335 (codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1064). Under this familiar test, a plaintiff seeking to establish a valid trademark must show that the primary significance of the term in the minds of the consuming public is not the product but the producer. Kellogg, 305 U.S. at 118, 59 S.Ct. at 113. To satisfy this requirement, a trademark need not only and exclusively indicate the producer (the source), but may, instead, serve a  'dual function--that of identifying a product while at the same time indicating its source,'  Canfield, 808 F.2d at 300 (quoting S.Rep. No. 98-627, 98th Cong. 5 (1984)). [A] mark is not generic merely because it has some significance to the public as an indication of the nature or class of an article. In order to become generic the principal significance of the word must be its indication of the nature or class of an article, rather than an indication of its origin. King-Seeley Thermos Co. v. Aladdin Indus., Inc., 321 F.2d 577, 580 (2d Cir.1963) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 20 The Third Circuit did not disregard the primary significance test in Canfield. Rather, it explained that the test--of itself--is of limited usefulness when the operative question is whether a new product name, even if it does tend to indicate the producer or source of the product, must nonetheless be considered a product genus or type, rather than merely a product brand. See Canfield, 808 F.2d at 299-301. For, as Judge Becker noted in Canfield, the primary significance test suffers from a potential weakness: it does not tell us how to deal with situations in which, while a term signifies a product that emanates from a single source, that term is needed also to designate not only a product brand but ... also a product genus. Id. at 301. 21 In confronting these situations, courts must remember that 22 [t]he genericness doctrine prevents trademarks from serving as the substitutes for patents, and protects the public right to copy any non-patented, functional characteristic of a competitor's product. Trademark law seeks to provide a producer neither with a monopoly over a functional characteristic it has originated nor with a monopoly over a particularly effective marketing phrase. Instead the law grants a monopoly over a phrase only if and to the extent it is necessary to enable consumers to distinguish one producer's goods from others and even then only if the grant of such a monopoly will not substantially disadvantage competitors by preventing them from describing the nature of their goods. Accordingly, if a term is necessary to describe a product characteristic that a competitor has a right to copy, a producer may not effectively preempt competition by claiming that term as its own. 23 Id. at 305 (citations omitted). Thus, explained Judge Becker, 24 to be consistent with the primary significance test, whether a product brand with a name used by one producer constitutes its own genus must turn on the extent to which the brand name communicates functional characteristics that differentiate the brand from the products of other producers. In making these calculations, consumer understanding will determine the extent to which a term communicates functional characteristics and the significance of a term's role in doing so because of a dearth or abundance of alternative terms that effectively communicate the same functional information. 25 Id. 26 With these principles in mind, the Canfield court, relying on our decision in CES Publishing Corp. v. St. Regis Publications, Inc., 531 F.2d 11, 13 (2d Cir.1975) (To allow trademark protection for generic terms, i.e., names which describe the genus of goods being sold, even when these have become identified with a first user, would grant the owner of the mark a monopoly, since a competitor could not describe his goods as what they are.), promulgated a test to determine if a new product name must be deemed also to refer to a product genus or type, rather than simply to an individual product brand: 27 If a producer introduces a product that differs from an established product class in a particular characteristic, and uses a common descriptive term of that characteristic as the name of the product, then the product should be considered its own genus. Whether the term that identifies the product is generic then depends on the competitors' need to use it. At the least, if no commonly used alternative effectively communicates the same functional information, the term that denotes the product is generic. If we held otherwise, a grant of trademark status could effectively prevent a competitor from marketing a product with the same characteristic despite its right to do so under the patent laws. 28 Canfield, 808 F.2d at 305-06 (citation and footnote omitted). We adopt that test today, and conclude that Canfield is based on long-standing and integral principles of trademark law. As such, it is a useful complement to, rather than a rejection of, the primary significance test. 5 29 The case before us is appropriate for analysis under Canfield. 6 Like Canfield (which concerned Diet Chocolate Fudge Soda), the case involves, in Judge Telesca's words, a relatively new product that ... differs from an established product class in a significant, functional characteristic, and uses the common descriptive term for that characteristic as its name. As such, although Honey Brown is clearly descriptive of Genesee's product--the beer is sweet, flavored with honey, and deep brown in color--it still might, of necessity, signify a generic category (or subcategory) of beer. Cf. Anheuser-Busch, Inc. v. John Labatt Ltd., 89 F.3d 1339, 1346 (8th Cir.1996) (upholding a jury's verdict that ice was and always had been the name of a beer category), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 944, 136 L.Ed.2d 833 (1997); Miller Brewing Co. v. G. Heileman Brewing Co., 561 F.2d 75, 80-81 (7th Cir.1977) (holding that light beer is a generic category of beer). 7 30 Employing the Canfield analysis, the district court had little trouble concluding that Genesee's mark is generic as applied to Stroh's product. We find the issue somewhat more complicated than did the district court, but we reach the same result. 31 The district court accepted Stroh's assertion that brown beer is a category of beer, and found that Honey Brown differs from this category by the addition of the descriptive word honey--which is not an ordinary ingredient of brown beers--and that [t]he word 'honey' is a commonly used descriptive term for which there is no effective equivalent. Accordingly, the district court concluded that Honey Brown is a generic mark not entitled to protection. 32 The problem with the district court's analysis is that, as Genesee correctly argues, there is no such category of beer as brown beer. Beers have traditionally been divided into two general categories: 1) ales, which are fermented at high temperatures for short periods of time; and 2) lagers, which are fermented at low temperatures for longer periods of time. 8 See JACKSON, BEER COMPANION, at 66 (In modern usage, ale indicates a brew that has a warm fermentation, traditionally with strains of yeast that rise to the top of the vessel. These 'top-fermenting' yeasts distinguish ales from lagers, where the yeasts work at cool temperatures, at the bottom of the vessel.). 9 Until the development of lagering techniques in the 19th century, all beers were made with ale yeasts. See MICHAEL JACKSON, THE NEW WORLD GUIDE TO BEER 9-10 (1988) [hereinafter, JACKSON, WORLD GUIDE]. Today, most English, Irish, Scottish, and Belgian beers are ales, while most German, Czech, Austrian, and Dutch beers are lagers. See JACKSON, BEER COMPANION, at 66-67, 196-97. 33 The category of ales is further divided into numerous subcategories (e.g., pale ale, porter, stout), as is the category of lagers (e.g., pilsner, bock, Oktoberfest). See Joint Appendix at 596 (listing the style categories used at the 1996 Great American Beer Festival). Thus, ale and lager are to zymurgy what plant and animal are to biology--the primary taxonomic divisions, each of which is further subdivided into numerous more specific but still generic classifications. 34 One traditional subcategory of ale is brown ale. See FRED ECKHARDT, THE ESSENTIALS OF BEER STYLE: A CATALOG OF BEER STYLES FOR BREWERS AND BEER ENTHUSIASTS 108-09 (1989) (describing the style of Brown Ale); JACKSON, BEER COMPANION, at 89, 118 (listing English brown ale and Flemish brown ale as styles of ale); JACKSON, WORLD GUIDE, at 12 (describing the category of Brown Ale); Garrett Oliver, A Brown Ale Comeback, ALL ABOUT BEER, July 1997, at 82 (describing the history of English and American brown ales); Declaration of Robert Haiber (historian of beer), Oct. 25, 1996, Joint Appendix at 210 (Historically, generic brown ale has been brewed for thousands of years, dating back to Mesopotamia and Egypt.). There is no comparable subcategory of brown lager. Nor is there a general category of brown beer that somehow encompasses both lagers and ales. See Joint Appendix at 596 (listing the style categories used at the Great American Beer Festival). Such a category would be antithetical to the fundamental notion that, absent a handful of hybrid and miscellaneous styles, all barley-based beer styles represent subcategories of the general categories of lager and ale. 10 35 Stroh asserts first that brown ale is a category of beer, and then that any beer that is brown and includes honey can be placed in a honey brown subcategory of brown ales. The problem with this analysis is that many beers that are using the name Honey Brown--including Genesee's--are not brown ales at all. They are not even ales; they are lagers. As such, it is simply not the case that Genesee's and Stroh's products both fall into the same subcategory of beer: brown ales brewed with honey. It follows that the district court's conclusion that there is a category of 'brown' beers in the market place, and both plaintiff's and defendant's beers are distinct from that category in that they contain honey, was clearly erroneous. 36 This does not solve the problem, however. It merely complicates it. It is well-established that [a] word may be generic of some things and not of others. Soweco, Inc. v. Shell Oil Co., 617 F.2d 1178, 1183 (5th Cir.1980). To take a familiar example, 'Ivory' would be generic when used to describe a product made from the tusks of elephants but arbitrary as applied to soap. Abercrombie & Fitch, 537 F.2d at 9 n. 6. Accordingly, in various cases a word [has been] found to be generic in one application but not in another. Expoconsul Int'l, Inc. v. A/E Sys., Inc., 755 F.Supp. 1237, 1243 (S.D.N.Y.1991). For instance, in Abercrombie & Fitch, we found that the word safari was generic as applied to hats, jackets, and expedition[s] into the African wilderness, but fanciful as applied to shorts, scarves, portable grills, and other items. See Abercrombie & Fitch, 537 F.2d at 11-14. And in Polo Fashions, Inc. v. Extra Special Prods., Inc., 451 F.Supp. 555 (S.D.N.Y.1978), the court found it clear that 'polo' is generic to polo shirts and coats, descriptive as to other shirts and coats and fanciful as it is applied to other articles of wearing apparel. Id. at 559; see also Comic Strip, Inc. v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., 710 F.Supp. 976, 978 (S.D.N.Y.1989) (As applied to a serial in the funny pages, the words 'comic strip' might be deemed ... generic. As applied to a nightclub providing live comedy entertainment, however, the terms take on another meaning and are at least suggestive.); Five Platters, Inc. v. Purdie, 419 F.Supp. 372, 381 & n. 6 (D.Md.1976) (noting that, as the name of a singing and entertainment group, the name The Platters is arbitrary and distinctive, even though [p]latter is a generic term as applied to dishes). 37 This same principle applies to the Canfield analysis. A mark that is descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary, or fanciful when applied to some products may nonetheless be generic when applied to certain other products, namely those products that require the use of the mark in order to convey their nature to the consumer. Rosemary Fried Surfboards would be an arbitrary mark entitled to protection. But Rosemary Fried Chicken would probably be generic, since fried chicken is clearly a product genus, and the words rosemary fried chicken are necessary for a chef effectively to communicate the fact that her fried chicken differs from most fried chicken in that it is flavored with rosemary. Similarly, Dry White is probably descriptive as applied to confetti or toothpaste, but would perhaps be generic as applied to wine. Or finally, the owner of the Red Hot Dating Service would not be able to recover from the maker of Acme Red Hot Dogs for trademark infringement. 38 So it is with this case. It is conceivable--though we certainly do not suggest, let alone decide--that Genesee's mark--Honey Brown--when applied to a lager (like its own beer) might be deemed descriptive, rather than generic. 11 For this to be so, a court would have to find that there were ways to convey the fact that a lager is brown in color and flavored with honey without using the words Honey Brown (at least in the order or way that Genesee has used them to identify its lager), and that consumers at large (as opposed to the beer cognoscenti ) did not understand brown beer (or brown lager) to be a generic category of beer. 12 Cf. Eagle Snacks, Inc. v. Nabisco Brands, Inc., 625 F.Supp. 571, 580-82 (D.N.J.1985) (finding the term Honey Roast to be descriptive as applied to nuts); Schmidt v. Quigg, 609 F.Supp. 227, 230-31 (E.D.Mich.1985) (finding the term Honey Baked Ham descriptive, and protectable because of secondary meaning). 39 But when applied to an ale, the mark is generic. There are numerous styles of beer in the marketplace, the names of which consist of a time-honored beer category modified by a new, creative ingredient or flavor. Examples include maple porter, pumpkin ale, nut brown ale, raspberry wheat, cranberry lambic, and oatmeal stout. In some of these new beer styles, the innovative ingredient is honey. As a result, there are honey wheats, honey porters, and honey cream ales on the market. Under the Canfield reasoning, which we have adopted, none of these names may be trademarked. Someone is always the first to sell these products, and if that brewer were granted a monopoly on the name, subsequent producers would lose the right to describe [their] goods as what they are. CES Publishing Corp., 531 F.2d at 13. 13 40 That principle controls this case. There is a recognized category of beers in the marketplace known as brown ales. And Stroh's product, Red River Valley Honey Brown Ale (but not Genesee's product, JW Dundee's Honey Brown Lager) can be placed within that category, 14 or more precisely, within a new subcategory of that category--brown ales made with honey: honey brown ales. Indeed, Stroh developed Red River Valley Honey Brown Ale by altering its brown ale recipe to include honey and brown sugar which created a smoother and sweeter brown ale. Declaration of Joseph Hertrich, Vice President, Brewing, Stroh Brewing Co., Joint Appendix at 185. Because the addition of the word honey is necessary to indicate a brown ale that is brewed with honey, Stroh has the right to call its beer a Honey Brown Ale. 15 Cf. Miller Brewing Co., 561 F.2d at 81 ([Miller] could not acquire the exclusive right to use the common descriptive word 'light' as a trademark for that beer. Other brewers whose beers have qualities that make them 'light' as that word has commonly been used remain free to call their beer 'light.' Otherwise a manufacturer could remove a common descriptive word from the public domain by investing his goods with an additional quality, thus gaining the exclusive right to call his wine 'rose', his whiskey 'blended', or his bread 'white.' ). 41 We therefore affirm the district court's conclusion that Genesee is not likely to succeed on the merits of its trademark infringement claim. 42