IN RE THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 675 F.3d 1297

Summary

This appeal involved two related applications for the applicant's service mark. The court noted that a term was merely descriptive if it immediately conveyed knowledge of a quality, feature, function, or characteristic of the goods or services with which it was used. A descriptive mark could be registered if it had obtained "secondary meaning" or "acquired distinctiveness," whereby the mark had come to serve a trademark function of identifying a particular source of goods or services. In this regard, 15 U.S.C.S. § 1052(f) stated that "Nothing in this chapter shall prevent the registration of a mark used by the applicant which has become distinctive of the applicant's goods in commerce." The court concluded that substantial evidence supported the TTAB's finding of descriptiveness. Because the court found that the service mark described at least one designated service within each of the applications, the court affirmed the descriptiveness refusals. Lastly, the court rejected the ...