A federal judge in Texas is allowing ExxonMobil to move forward with its claim that FXX Network’s logo — which features two interlocking X’s — is diluting its trademark, reports The Hollywood Reporter’s Hollywood, Esq.
“The multinational oil and gas corporation brought the lawsuit last October, alleging that it has a design mark over a stylized Exxon and has continuously used it since 1971. The logo of the FXX Network, it says, ‘is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake, or to deceive customers and potential customers of the parties … as to some affiliation, connection, or association of Defendants’ business with ExxonMobil,’” the story reports.
At the time, a network representative said FXX was “confident that viewers won’t tune in to FXX looking for gas or motor oil, and drivers won’t pull up to an Exxon pump station expecting to get ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.’”
Someone should point out to Exxon (and the judge in this case) the prior art known as the Cross of Lorraine. A “mark” that a certain religious organization has claim to… and that goes back much further than 1971. Exxon’s mark clearly resembles the Cross of Lorraine and much more than the FXX mark resembles that of Exxon.
So who’s really infringing who’s mark?
Our courts / legal system have become a ludicrous maze of verbal / intellectual gymnastics with little relationship to solve real world everyday problems using the common sense that the rest of the society (outside the legal industry) must to deal with everyday living. Yet it is the rest of society that has to deal with the consequences… while the legal industry blithely marches on. Those who would argue otherwise are too close to the problem… they can’t see the forest for the trees. If left to their own devices, there’s no doubt the legal industry would attempt to declare the law of gravity unconstitutional.
What John said.