Court Opinion

ID: 9454056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:34:19.245519+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:56.868050
License: Public Domain

ALMOND, Judge.
Yawata Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., appeals from the decision of the Trademark. Trial and Appeal Board1 refusing registration of the mark shown in appellant’s application2 for iron, namely pig iron, sponge.irqn, cast iron, and ferro alloy; steel, namely ordinary steel and special steel; semi-finished steel, namely blooms, billets, slabs, sheet bars and tin bars; and finished steel products, namely rails and accessories, bars and shapes, sheet piling, wire products, wire rods, plates, sheets, high tensile strength steels, hot extruded steels, stainless steels, and clad steels. Ownership of a Japanese regis*753tration is asserted. The mark described in the application and for which registration is sought on the Principal Register is reproduced below:
Refusal of registration was predicated on the ground that appellant’s mark so resembles the design mark comprising the letter “S” within a circle (shown below) previously registered for carbon steel, alloy steel, semi-steel, and malleable and grey iron castings 3 as to be likely when applied to appellant’s goods, to cause confusion or mistake or deception.
There is no issue here as to priority of use or as to the identity of the competing goods of the respective parties. The sole issue is likelihood of confusion within the purview of section 2(d) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1052(d).
Appellant has cited numerous third-party registrations of marks with the letter “S” as a dominant characteristic surrounded by a design and used in conjunction with metal products. Appellant contends that insamuch as these marks were permitted registration “one over the other,” appellant’s mark should also be allowed over the registration cited by the board. Appellant’s reliance on third-party registrations of somewhat similar marks is, as the board said, not conclusive on the issue here involved. Those registrations, as appellant admits, are distinguished one from the other. The most they can establish is that the use of the letter “S” as a mark or part of a mark is not particularly distinctive in the metal field. This does not answer the question of likelihood of confusion, mistake or deception.
After comment on the third-party registrations, the board stated:
In the final analysis, we must look at the marks to determine whether there does in fact exist such similarity therebetween as would be likely to cause confusion or mistake or deception. * * *
There are of course differences between the marks but when the' marks are applied to the goods, these differences are apparently minimized. As cast on pig iron, the distinctive points of applicant’s mark are not readily discernible and as stenciled on packages of hot strip coil * * * the impression of applicant’s mark is of an “S” within a circle. As we view the marks, as illustrated above, the impact of each is substantially identical — an “S” within a circle.
We conclude that in view of the substantial similarities between the marks and in view of the identity of the involved goods, confusion or mistake or deception is likely.
*754Appellant argues that inasmuch as the goods involved are not “over the counter” wares and are bought only by discriminating purchasers, likelihood of confusion is thereby minimized. Here, as noted we have legally identical goods, hence the same class of purchasers, and marks which are quite similar in their essential features, as well as the fact that the goods as identified in the application are not restricted to any particular channel of distrbution.
We are not persuaded of error in the decision of the board, which decision is accordingly affirmed.
Affirmed.
SMITH, Judge, participated in the hearing of this case but died before a decision was reached.

. Board opinion abstracted, 150 USPQ 833.

. Serial No. 188,404 filed March. 10, 1964.