Trademarks

Nokia Corp. is taking steps to make sure that you never miss another phone call, text or email alert again: The company has filed a patent for a tattoo that would send "a perceivable impulse" to your skin whenever someone tries to contact you on the phone. According to the patent filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the phone would communicate with the tattoo through magnetic waves. The phone would emit magnetic waves and the tattoo would act as a receiver. When the waves hit the tattoo, it would set off a tactile response in the user's skin.

Luis Campos designs games. Not your app-happy, iPaddy, smartphoney games. Old-school board games and word puzzles. Campos, 79, of North Hollywood figures he's concocted more than 40 games over the years. Two of them are patented and trademarked (although not particularly well known). Another is awaiting patent and trademark approval. So it wasn't entirely a surprise for Campos to have received a letter the other day from United States Trademark Registration Office alerting him that a payment of $375 was due. It was only after he picked his way through the fine print that Campos discovered United States Trademark Registration Office isn't really a government agency and that it offers no guarantee it will actually do anything to protect Campos' trademarks.

The iPad trademark battle between Apple Inc. and Proview Technologies has jumped from China to the U.S. as a new lawsuit accuses the tablet maker of committing fraud in 2009. Proview, a Shenzhen, China-based company known largely for making computer monitors, filed a complaint in Santa Clara County Superior Court, accusing Apple of forming a company in London with the sole purpose of purchasing the trademark for the "iPad" name on behalf of Apple. That company was called IP Application Development and was a subsidiary of Apple, Proview said in the California lawsuit.

Apple's iPad has been cleared for sale after a Shanghai court turned down a sales injunction request made by Proview Technology as the two companies argue over who owns the rights to the iPad trademarked name. The dispute between Apple and Proview is one that is playing out in multiple Chinese courts, with some rulings going Apple's way and others being decided in Proview's favor. The Shanghai decision is the latest in the complicated and messy dispute between the two companies.

Apple Inc.'s fight to use the iPad name in China has hit another snag after authorities seized dozens of the Apple tablet computers from store shelves in northern China. The seizures in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province, were in response to a trademark infringement complaint filed by Chinese company Proview Technology, according to its attorney. Proview Technology, which is based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, said it holds the trademark for the hot-selling device in China.

An obscure Chinese company's battle with Apple Inc. over who has rights to the iPad name took another unlikely turn after authorities in northeastern China seized dozens of the Apple tablets for trademark infringement, an attorney for the company said. The seizures in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, were in response to a complaint filed by Proview Technology, a company based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen which has stymied Apple's bid to secure the trademark in China for its hot-selling device.

There's room for only one cupcake company called Sprinkles, and that's the one in Beverly Hills, a newly settled lawsuit seems to suggest. The popular chain, which first launched in Southern California in 2005, recently settled a trademark infringement lawsuit against a Fairfield, Conn., bakery that was calling itself Pink Sprinkles. That business, which opened in 2009, is now calling itself the Pink Cupcake Shack. Its website calls the shop “Fairfield's first cupcake boutique in Brick Walk Promenade” and touts the staff's decades of experience.

  With Super Bowl XLVI just days away, advertisers are in an all-out blitz, pitching everything from pizzas to TVs in conjunction with the biggest sporting event of the year. The ads often feature "super" savings and football themes, but one thing is conspicuously absent from nearly all of them: the name of the game itself. Trademarked and tenaciously defended by the NFL, the phrase "Super Bowl" is available to just a handful of official sponsors that pay significant amounts for the right to include the name in their marketing efforts.

From San Francisco -- It was just two years ago that USC was coached by Pete Carroll in this same stadium — his final game. Now Trojans football is nowhere near as much fun. Maybe Carroll's act had become tired with the NCAA weighing heavy on the future of USC football and he had to go, but how about a sign of life as things start anew? Where's the killer instinct, as much a trademark in the Carroll era as his relentless credo to compete? How about Lane Kiffin coming across as more than just an offensive cheerleader and coordinator, as his title is "head coach.