User:Cool Hand Luke/In re Trek 2000

		Precedent Barnstar
		I award EJSawyer this Precedent Barnstar for serendipitously contributing text cited by administrative judges in a real-world legal dispute. In the case, In re Trek 2000 International Ltd., No. 77099785 (T.T.A.B. Nov. 30, 2010), Singapore-based Trek 2000 successfully won registration of the trademark "ThumbDrive." In 2008, a trademark examiner approved principal registration for ThumbDrive® to Trek 2000 (a supplemental registration, which confers fewer legal benefits, had been granted two years earlier). In an unusual move, the examiner subsequently requested reinstatement of jurisdiction following the period for public comment. Once granted jurisdiction, the examiner rejected the trademark as generic. That is, the examiner found that "ThumbDrive" could not be a proprietary trademark because it referred generically to USB flash drives. In an effort to traverse the rejection, Trek 2000 cited several references, including the Wikipedia article on USB flash drive. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board blockquoted this article, a practice that I find somewhat horrifying (as do other commentators). The quoted passage favored Trek 2000's position because it suggested that "ThumbDrive" was commonly understood to derive from a trademark: The myriad different brand names and terminology used, in the past and currently, make UFDs more difficult for manufacturers to market and for consumers to research. Some commonly used names are actually trademarks of particular companies, such as Cruzer, TravelDrive, ThumbDrive, and Disgo. Although the Board did not place special emphasis on the Wikipedia article, some commentators have suggested that the decision may have been a very close call. Your 2008 edit inserted the key term into the article. You added "ThumbDrive" to the list of commonly-used trademarked names. Interestingly, your edit may have false at one point—after the trademark examiner requested reinstatement of jurisdiction and refused registration. The 2010 TTAB decision, which quoted your contribution, ironically made the addition indisputably true. Your edit is so unusual that I award you this first-ever Precedent Barnstar. I trust that your edit complied with Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy. As an intellectual property attorney gamely noted about the Trek 2000 decision, "Wikipedia is available for posting a favorable entry regarding [trademarks]"!
Presented by Cool Hand Luke, Wikipedia Arbitrator