Canine Caviar Trademark Registrability Analysis

Can you call dog food "caviar" if it contains no fish eggs? In this episode of Mark My Words, we sink our teeth into the fascinating case of the "CANINE CAVIAR" trademark. This brand name serves as a perfect case study for one of the trickiest areas of trademark law: misdescriptive marks. We'll explore the critical difference between a mark that is "merely descriptive," "deceptively misdescriptive," and one that is flat-out "deceptive" under the Lanham Act. We break down the legal tests the USPTO uses, focusing on consumer perception and whether a misrepresentation is actually believable and material to a purchasing decision. Discover why the "CANINE CAVIAR" mark likely swam past the absolute bar of Section 2(a) and landed on the Principal Register, offering a crucial lesson on the power of metaphor and acquired distinctiveness in branding.

*USPTO
*Apple Computers Inc,