Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing, and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to create authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series where we remain persistent in introducing a variety of topics, which will look to not only educate but also deliver in a sense that only Miletti Law® can. In this regard, this is Part XVII and the second last blog under the series “Fundamentals of Trademarks,” where a number of continuing blogs have been dedicated to exploring trademarks in detail & depth. Having hammered on the “likelihood of confusion” in Part XVI, we have looked into the ideology of “standing to sue” and the role it plays in trademark enforcement in this blog and Part XVII of the series.

The Ideology of “Standing to Sue” & its Role in Trademark Enforcement

For starters, standing to sue implies to having the right to file a lawsuit. In order for the jury to be convinced that the defendant’s conduct was the direct cause of the alleged damages and injuries, sufficient evidence must be provided by the plaintiff(s). In the U.S., a combination of federal law and state law governs trademarks. On the one hand, while concurrent jurisdiction is entitled to state courts, the federal trademark law (i.e., the Trademark Act of 1946 or Lanham Act) is entitled with the original jurisdiction of infringement claims. In this regard, the federal law provides registered trademark owner’s with “standing to sue” rights once they believe that their marks have been infringed upon.

Notably, given that a mark is used in interstate commerce, the federal trademark law also provides an unregistered mark owner the right to use a “false designation of origin” cause of action as standing to sue under federal law. Further, the federal trademark law contains provisions for standing to sue for infringement to the exclusive licensee of a registered mark that is in substance an assignee. However, although each may adopt a false description theory or false designation of origin to have standing to sue, the federal trademark law does not provide for standing to sue to both a nonexclusive licensee of a registered mark and a true exclusive licensee of a registered mark.

In the next blog and Part XVIII of the series, we shall conclude this series by hammering on “Legal Remedies Provided for Trademark Infringement.”

Until then, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.