RateJamaica

Friday

Trademark Fight: Intel Is Worried You Might Think It Is A Chinese Travel Agency

Post a Comment September 26, 2008 – 3:16 pm | Permalink |  Print This Post |

Do these two logos look the same to you? Is there the remotest chance that you might confuse Intellife Travel, a small travel agency in Santa Clara, California that caters to Chinese Americans and expats, with Intel the company? You know, the one that makes computer chips.

Me neither. But tell that to Intel’s trademark lawyers, who filed a lawsuit against Intellife on September 18 for trying “to cause confusion that Intel is the source or sponsor of Intellife’s services” and “dilution of the INTEL trademark.” There are serious trademark lawsuits and there are frivolous ones. This appears to be the latter. We are not talking about a situation like with Scrabulous borrowing whole hog from Scrabble. This is about two syllables that overlap. The complaint, which we’ve obtained, is embedded below.

We’ve also obtained the communications between Zhang and Intel’s outside law firm leading up to this complaint. It shows how a seemingly boilerplate inquiry can lead to a full-blown lawsuit, and sheds some light onto the bullying tactics large companies such as Intel routinely employ in the name of protecting their trademarks and other intellectual property. After all, Intellife is a two man-shop that can hardly afford to take on a corporate giant like Intel, which has about $40 billion in annual revenues. But so far, Intellife refuses to budge. It’s name, by the way, stands for “Intelligent International Lifestyle”