Assessment Questions

What is the purpose of the intellectual property right we call a trademark?

1. To protect the inventions of businesses.
2. To indicate the origin of goods or services.
3. To reward businesses for their creative works.

Which of the following is NOT true of trademarks?

1. They protect the public by preventing confusion or deception about the source of goods and services.
2. They protect the market reputation and goodwill of the producers of goods.
3. They are granted at the moment of creation.
4. They are excellent marketing and advertising tools.

How much did Nike pay a graphic designer in 1971 to produce its swoosh logo now estimated to be worth as much as $20 billion?

1. $850,000.
2. $25,000.
3. $35.

What value do trademarks provide society?

1. They encourage and reward creative enterprise.
2. They marshal the benefits of this creativity to the public good.
3. They protect the consumer from deception.
4. All of the above.

What is the legal foundation for federal trademark law?

1. The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
2. Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.
3. State laws.

How are trademarks different from patents and copyrights?

1. They are not limited in duration.
2. They do not hinder the sale of similar products and services by others.
3. They cannot be obtained by mere adoption, but only through commercial use.
4. All of the above are true statements.

Why did trademarks not emerge until the start of widespread trade in the Bronze Age?

1. There was no government agency to register trademarks before that time.
2. That was when written records of trademarks could be printed.
3. Widespread trade requires a certain level of public trust in the provenance and quality of goods, which trademarks helped to build.

Besides indicating the source of a good or service, how did trademarks change with the emergence of guilds in the Middle Ages?

1. The guilds issued trademarks only to their own members.
2. They became a means by which guilds could ensure the quality of work done by guild members.
3. The guilds started charging money to issue a trademark.

What is one of the oldest trademarks still in existence?

1. The Royal Dutch Tulip Company.
2. Wedgewood china.
3. Löwenbräu Brewery.

What is the significance of an old lawsuit known as Sanforth’s Case?

1. It proves that 250 years before the Industrial Revolution, trademark infringement was viewed as deceit and a violation of laws against unfair competition.
2. It is the first trademark infringement case known to be recorded.
3. It serves as the foundation for modern trademark laws and policies.
4. All of the above.

What caused U.S. trademark laws to evolve from a patchwork of state laws into a unitary federal trademark system?

1. The Industrial Revolution transformed America’s many local and regional markets into a unified national economy.
2. Producers of goods and services began to grow into national entities.
3. State laws often conflicted with each other.
4. All of the above.

Why were the first two national trademark laws ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

1. The court ruled that they infringed on non-trademark owners’ first amendment rights to free speech.
2. The court ruled in 1879 that the patent and copyright clauses of the Constitution gave Congress no authority to regulate trademarks.
3. The court ruled that they were too vaguely written.

What was the chief weakness of the Trade Mark Act of 1881?

1. It only regulated the trademarks used in commerce with other nations and with Indian tribes.
2. It only allowed for the registration but not the enforcement of trademarks.
3. It derived its authority from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Lanham Act is the principal federal law on trademarks in the United States. Which of the following was NOT a feature of trademark law enacted by the act?

1. It broadened the national system of trademark registration.
2. It set the trademark renewal period.
3. It required registration of trademarks before owners could gain access to the federal courts for redress.
4. It established remedies in the case of infringement.

When does federal law create a presumption of trademark abandonment?

1. When its owner ceases to use it in commerce.
2. When its owner ceases to employ it throughout the national territory of the United States.
3. When its owner ceases to use the trademark in commerce for three or more years.

Of the four individual types of marks, what does a trademark identify?

1. Services provided to either consumers or other businesses.
2. Physical goods or commodities that are manufactured, produced, grown, or that exist naturally.
3. Both of the above.

A collective mark identifies a trademark owned by a member of a certain organization. True or False?

1. True.
2. False.

A certification mark indicates what?

1. The certified or verified origin of a product or service.
2. A product or service that meets certain standards or requirements.

A trademark may be a word (or phrase), name, symbol, or device. Which of these do the following trademarks represent?

1. Chanel handbags.
2. The MGM lion’s roar.
3. Tiffany’s blue color.
4. The power-on chime in Apple’s Mac computers.

Why has no company been able to gain trademark protection for “87 Octane” as a brand of gasoline?

1. It’s a number.
2. It’s not trade dress.
3. It doesn’t indicate the origin of the gas—whether Exxon, Shell, or another company.

What’s the difference between a design protected as a trademark and trade dress?

1. A trademark-protected design consists of a discrete symbol or logo on the product or service, whereas trade dress is its overall “look and feel.”
2. A trademarked trade dress covers a product or service’s overall features like its size, shape, and color combinations rather than a particular symbol or design.
3. Both of these.

In what way are trademarked designs and trade dress similar to design patents?

1. All three protect the unique look of a company’s products from being infringed.
2. All three protect only the nonfunctional elements of the product’s appearance.
3. Both of these.

What is the trademark world’s corollary to novelty in patents?

1. Non-obviousness.
2. Distinctiveness.
3. Originality.

Of the following five categories of marks—fanciful, arbitrary, suggestive, descriptive, and generic—which one of them can never be protected as a trademark?

1. Descriptive.
2. Generic.
3. Fanciful.

Which kind of mark is owned by the following companies?

1. Apple.
2. Xerox.
3. Coppertone.
4. Windows.

Why was the store Toys “R” Us able to gain trademark protection for its name, even though “toys” is a generic word used by thousands of toy stores nationwide?

1. Because Toys “R” Us was the first to use the name “toys” and thus has priority.
2. Because Toys “R” Us was the first to use the name nationwide.
3. Because of the fanciful spelling of its name.

Why did “Cellophane” and “Aspirin” lose their trademarks

1. The original companies making these products went out of business.
2. The public came to associate the name with an entire category of similar products.

What are some of the bars to getting a trademark?

1. The prior use bar.
2. The functionality bar.
3. Subject matter bars.
4. All of the above.

If geographic marks that are deceptively misdescriptive are ineligible for trademark protection, then why was Amazon able to gain trademark protection for its name, which refers to a geographic area of South America?

1. The name “Amazon” is not indicative of the geographic source of the retailer’s goods, nor do consumers think those goods come from the Amazonian region.
2. The name “Amazon” is not a factor in whether or not consumers decide to purchase books, clothing, electronics, or anything else from the company.
3. Amazon’s brand stands for low prices and great customer service, not for anything of a geographic nature.
4. All of the above.

As with copyrights, trademarks do not have to be registered with the federal government, but doing so gives their owners all of the following additional rights EXCEPT for which one?

1. The exclusive right to use the mark in their geographic area of business.
2. The ability to seek assistance from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service in preventing the importation of infringing foreign goods.
3. The exclusive right to use the mark nationwide.
4. The right to use the federal registration symbol ® instead of the ™ symbol.

You can’t file a trademark registration application unless you are currently engaged in business.

1. True.
2. False.

Which of the following explains why a trademark owner may assign it to another?

1. A business name change.
2. A bankruptcy proceeding.
3. As collateral for a loan.
4. All of the above.

How does trademark infringement harm consumers?

1. By confusing consumers about the source of goods or services.
2. By allowing others to “palm off” lower-quality knockoffs in place of the high-quality goods they are seeking to buy.
3. By damaging trust between consumers and providers of goods and services.
4. All of the above.

How is the “similarity” between two marks in a trademark infringement case determined?

1. By examining each individual component of a mark and seeing if another mark uses individual components that are similar.
2. By examining the totality of the two marks as seen and experienced by the consumer in the context of the goods or services on which they are used and seeing if they are similar enough to cause confusion or deception.

What is trademark dilution as opposed to trademark infringement?

1. Dilution occurs when a mark famous to the general American public is blurred or tarnished by a similar mark, regardless of whether that mark is used on similar goods or services.
2. Dilution occurs when a trademark grows weaker in the minds of consumers as a result of its owner not advertising or featuring it prominently enough on products.

Which of the following is true about trademark remedies?

1. Damages can be significantly increased if trademark infringement is deemed willful.
2. Courts frequently use injunctions based on trademark law to stop the importation of products that once carried infringing marks even after those marks have been removed.
3. Federal trademark law also provides for punitive damages for trademark infringement.

A party may be permitted the fair use of another’s trademark under two conditions, known as nominative fair use and classic fair use. Which of the following is an example of nominative fair use?

1. When a business compares its products with those of a competitor, with no intent to confuse customers as to the source of the competitor’s goods.
2. When a trademark of another is used to refer to that other’s goods or services in legitimate connection with one’s own, such as a notice on the packaging of a small company’s graphic design program that it can run on the Microsoft Windows operating system.
3. Both of the above are correct.