10 November 2009

Someone Needs a Serious Chill Pill

That explains, why my sandals go from 0-60 in 5.2 Seconds
Porsche makes a $50,000+ sports car it calls the Cayman.

Crocs, the makers of the ugly sandals, makes a pair of ugly sandals called the Cayman.

For what it's worth, Porsche has sued Crocs the name, claiming violation of trademark.

Honestly, I think that Crocs have a better claim to the name, given that the Caymans (the reptile is a caiman) are an island where one walks on the beach, but that's irrelevant.

The real question is whether there is any possibility of confusion between a 2,954 lb sports car, and a 5 oz shoe.

The purpose of a trademark is not to give a company exclusive use of a name, but to avoid consumer confusion, and as best as I can tell the shoes predate the car anyway (see comments here), which would strongly imply that Crocs has the advantage such as it is.

In any case, Porsche got an injunction against the shoes in Germany, but Germany has weird IP law.*

*This is what got us that Mercedes ad where they say that they have a patent on crumple zones, but "Never enforced the Patent". They never enforced the patent, because it is not recognized anywhere else in the world.

I believe Germany changed their patent laws at some point in the 1970s.

I offer the caveat that these comments in the footnotes regarding the Mercedes patent are recollections of a conversation over a decade ago vague 20+ year old memories though, so YMMV, though a Google search does have people who recall the ad.

0 comments :

Post a Comment