Introduction:

Have you ever wondered how two different companies can use the same and/ or analogous words on their separate products? Perhaps you have not. But this is a question I frequently consider while harkening to Apple Corp. music on my Apple iPhone from the Pandora music app while wriggling with my Pandora cuff while savoring a piece of Dove chocolate and adding some Dove cleaner and Prime Hydration sport drinks to my Amazon Prime order. It actually keeps me up at night.

While a factious script, it serves to punctuate the question. How can there be both Dove chocolate and Dove cleaner; Apple Corp. and Apple Tech.; Pandora music and Pandora jewelry; and more lately Logan Paul’s and KSI’s Prime Hydration sports drink and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Prime? The short answer disco-existence. Whether that be begrudgingly, intentionally, fairly (i.e., forcefully), uncaringly, etcetera- lee. And therefore, separate realities, similar as the exemplifications over, can coincidently use the same name at the same time for different products.

That said, the Trademark Act provides specific means for a different kind of concurrent use, through which an eligible aspirant may request allocation of a enrollment coincidently with the enrollment of a disagreeing and/ or separate mark. See 15U.S.C§ 1052. In such an operation, an aspirant “typically requests a geographically confined enrollment” thereby seeking “enrollment for a specified geographical area of the United States” and listing “one or further parties who concededly have rights in the mark in other geographical areas of the United States.” See Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure July 2022, §1207.04(a).

“These other parties may enjoy operations or enrollments, or they may have common law rights in the mark but no operation or enrollment.” Id. suppose of all the different “Black Sheep” cafés and “Farmhouse” caffs

 You’ve ever seen or eaten at scattered across the United States. These are high exemplifications of the type of geographical concurrent uses that the Trademark Act may allow – and there are dozens of trademark enrollments for each.

In order to request a concurrent use enrollment, the use must meet one or further of the following criteria

1.      The concurrent use request is sought pursuant to a decree of a court of competent governance ( or a decision of the Board in a previous concurrent use proceeding) reflecting a final determination of the rights of the concurrent stoner;

2.      The proprietor of the enrollment warrants to the entitlement of a concurrent use enrollment to the aspirant; or

3.    The aspirant’s date of first use in commerce is before the form date of the pending operations or of any enrollments issued under the Trademark Act of 1946.

 d. at1207.04(c). still, and an operation is filed, “( a) n operation for enrollment as a legal concurrent stoner is generally examined in the same manner as any other operation for enrollment , If one or further of these criteria are met. Seeid., at1207.04( d). The needed content of the vindicated statement differs depending on the type of mark, but, for illustration, when it comes to a concurrent use operation for a trademark or service mark, the vindicated statement must include

 The aspirant’s goods and/ or services, the geographic area in which the aspirant is using the mark in commerce, and the mode of use in which the aspirant seeks enrollment;

The concurrent druggies’ names and addresses, the concurrent stoner’s goods and/ or services, and the enrollments issued to or operations filed by the concurrent druggies (if any), to the extent known by the aspirant; and

 The geographic areas in which the concurrent stoner is using the mark in commerce, the mode of use by the concurrent druggies, and the time ages of similar use by the concurrent druggies, to the extent known by the aspirant.