Decisions · 86454420
In re Serial Podcast, LLC
Serial No. 86454420 · Decided 2018-03-26 · Other
What happened
The USPTO’s refusal to register the plain word mark SERIAL for Serial Podcast’s ongoing investigative audio program was upheld in full — the Board found SERIAL is simply the common name for a type of episodic audio content and, even with 172 million downloads and thousands of media stories, cannot function as a protected brand name when written in plain text.
The marks
Applicant
SERIAL
"entertainment in the nature of an ongoing audio program featuring investigative reporting, interviews, and documentary storytelling" in International Class 41
Why this decision is significant
This is the leading TTAB precedent on genericness for podcast/audio media, establishing that SERIAL is the common name for episodic audio content as both a noun and adjective, and that de facto secondary meaning (even with massive commercial success) cannot rescue a generic term from a registration bar.
Research significance is Trademark Valet's editorial rating of how useful a decision is to practitioners. It is not a statement of precedential weight — that is the separate Precedential field, which comes from the Board.
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The original record
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