Decisions · 86836082
In re United Trademark Holdings, Inc.
Serial No. 86836082 · Decided 2017-06-13 · Other
What happened
The Board refused to register LITTLE MERMAID for dolls, agreeing the name evokes the famous fairy-tale character but holding that because the character is in the public domain (not owned by any single company), the mark still just describes what the doll depicts rather than identifying a single commercial source.
The marks
Applicant
LITTLE MERMAID
"dolls," in Class 28
Why this decision is significant
Precedential decision establishing the rule that character names for PUBLIC DOMAIN fictional characters (as opposed to proprietary characters like Superman) are merely descriptive of dolls/figurines depicting them, extending and applying the Carlson Dolls/MARTHA WASHINGTON framework to fairy-tale characters.
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
Read the opinion and every filing on the Board's own docket. The summary above is our paraphrase, not a quotation from the opinion. The opinion is the authority.
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