Decisions · 87040022
In re American Cruise Lines, Inc.
Serial No. 87040022 · Decided 2018-10-03 · Section 2(d) Ex Parte Appeal
What happened
The Board allowed AMERICAN CONSTELLATION to proceed to registration for cruise ship services over the cited marks CONSTELLATION and CELEBRITY CONSTELLATION, finding that even though the marks were similar and the services identical, cruise passengers research and plan carefully before buying, and the two companies' detailed agreement not to confuse consumers outweighed those similarities.
The marks
Applicant
AMERICAN CONSTELLATION
"cruise ship services; transportation of passengers by ship; arranging and conducting cruises for others," in Class 39
Cited registration
CONSTELLATION;CELEBRITY CONSTELLATION
"cruise ship services, arranging and conducting cruises for others, and transportation of passengers by ship," in Class 39
How the marks compared
| Dimension | Finding | What the Board said |
|---|---|---|
| sound | Similar | AMERICAN CONSTELLATION contains the entirety of CONSTELLATION. |
| appearance | Similar | The cited mark CONSTELLATION is entirely subsumed within Applicant’s mark AMERICAN CONSTELLATION. |
| meaning | Similar | CONSTELLATION is arbitrary as to cruise services; adding AMERICAN yields a similar meaning of an American star or group. |
| commercial impression | Similar | The Board found the marks similar in their entireties in commercial impression. |
Similar
du Pont factors that bore on the outcome
| # | Factor | Weight | What the Board found |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Similarity of the marks | Favored Refusal | The marks were found similar in appearance, sound, connotation, and commercial impression. |
| 2 | Relatedness of the goods or services | Favored Refusal | The cruise ship services are identical, weighing in favor of confusion. |
| 4 | Conditions of sale and buyer sophistication | Dispositive — Favored Applicant | Cruise passengers exercise a heightened degree of purchasing care, corroborated by unrebutted testimony from both companies' officers. |
| 10 | Market interface between applicant and owner of a prior mark | Dispositive — Favored Applicant | The parties‘ detailed, record-corroborated consent agreement was not a ’naked' consent and weighed heavily against finding likely confusion. |
Why this decision is significant
Precedential reversal providing the Board’s fullest modern guidance on when a consent agreement is not ‘naked’ and may dominate the confusion analysis, and on crediting industry-insider testimony of careful cruise-purchase decisions; factors 4 and 10 carried the day over similar marks for identical services; cited in later consent-agreement disputes.
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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