PTO Wrong to Reject Filmmaker Mode Application as ‘Merely Descriptive,’ Says UHDA

A Patent and Trademark Office examining attorney erred last summer when she rejected the UHD Alliance’s application to register Filmmaker Mode as a certification mark on grounds that it’s “merely descriptive” of the TVs it’s meant to certify, responded the alliance Friday. The wording in the mark is “not inherently distinctive,” and is “unregistrable” under trademark law because it just describes “an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of the goods applicant will certify,” wrote PTO attorney Catherine Caycedo Aug. 14. UHDA disagrees, because it takes “a leap of imagination to understand that the Mark identifies an ability of the viewer to watch (not make) video content in the original format it was created, without the embedded digital alterations that are a common feature of most products that allow the user to view content,” said the alliance. The mark “does not, and can not, identify anyone or anything that actually makes a film, which is the Examining Attorney’s primary argument,” it said. Filmmaker Mode “does not immediately convey any information about an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose or use of its goods,” it said. “Consumers will have to exercise imagination or a leap of thought to determine what kind of product may bear the Mark and what the Mark actually signifies.” Case law supports the conclusion that “these are qualities inherent to a suggestive mark, not a descriptive one,” it said. It urged the attorney to withdraw her objections and approve the application for publication. UHDA bowed Filmmaker Mode Aug. 27 as the ease-of-access TV-picture setting free of the image processing that creators disdain for rendering content as if it were shot on high-speed video rather than film (see 1908270001). UHDA launched it with brand support from LG, Panasonic and Vizio, and added Kaleidescape, Samsung and TP Vision backing at CES (see 2001070034).