Samsung Faces Dec. 29 Deadline To Appeal PTO's Refusal of 'Super UHD' Trademark Application

Samsung faces a Dec. 29 deadline for responding to pushback at the Patent and Trademark Office on the company’s application (serial number 79166470) to trademark the term “Super UHD” for use on a wide range of audio, video and mobile devices, including TVs and smartphones, PTO records show. PTO provisionally refused the application June 29, but gave Samsung six months to appeal. PTO refused the application “because the applied-for mark merely describes a characteristic or feature of applicant’s goods,” the agency said. “A mark is merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of an applicant’s goods and/or services.” The agency also had problems with the application to combine “super” and “UHD” in the same term, it told Samsung. “The combination of SUPER UHD would describe very good or excellent products that display at least 8 million active pixels, with a lower resolution boundary of at least 3,840 by 2,160,” PTO said. “In relations to the applied-for goods, this wording would merely laud the quality or nature of applicant’s electronics in that they are very good or excellent and would feature an ultra high definition quality or characteristic or are used in relations to goods exhibiting ultra high definition.” Case law determined that when the word “super” is used to describe a company’s goods and services, “then the composite term is considered merely descriptive of the goods or services,” and therefore ruled out as qualifying as a registered trademark, the agency said. Samsung representatives didn’t comment. According to other PTO records, Samsung previously applied for registration of the SUHD trademark Nov. 21, 2014, about six weeks before the opening of the January CES, where for the first time Samsung pushed technology bearing the SUHD name (see 1501050054). PTO granted Samsung registration of the SUHD trademark Aug. 18, agency records show.