Originally Posted by
Zorak
There are some law blogs/news sites that have this too but require a login right now, so OMAAT:
https://onemileatatime.com/american-...elta-flagship/
and quoting from the actual complaint:
This seems silly and pretty obvious to fail over a generic lowercase-f use of "flagship" vs. incorporating it into a logo/brand/etc. but IANAL.
I also wonder if maybe it's one of those things where everyone knows it's silly but if they don't "fight" this then it will erode their claim to damages if a legitimate case of infringement arises.
I don't really know what I'm looking at but I put American Airlines into a simple search on the Trademark Database and flagship is a registered AA trademark. When the results for American Airlines as owner came up I did a find on the page and saw flagship and I clicked on it and they use it for a lot of different things.
The current registration number is
5854303. The application that led to this number was filed in February 2018 and the registration came through in September of 2019. This must be a successor registration or something because the information lists various classes of use I guess it is. Some of these show a first use in 1998 and one shows a first use in 1936.
I think they're overreaching like crazy. AA is using it as a brand, and deviating a bit from common usage. For example Flagship Lounges, applied to ALL their lounges, as I understand it, or at any rate all the lounges in some category they define, and they are using this term to distinguish these products from OTHER airlines' products.
As I read the OMAAT article, Delta is using flagship very much in its ordinary sense - the premier whatever-it-is in the Delta family. I understand that they are calling one of the lounges in ATL something like "OUR flagship lounge" and the A350 "OUR flagship aircraft" and Delta One Suites "OUR flagship business class product" - identifying these things as the best DELTA things. It seems like AA is trying to paste this word on their things and trying to monopolize the ordinary sense of the word. They can use words in trademarks all they like but using a word in a trademark doesn't allow the holder to monopolize the ordinary sense of the word.
Also, the confusion issue. If I were writing the answer, it would be hard for me to resist adding a section saying something like "an ordinary customer contemplating a purchase and seeing Delta's reference to 'our flagship Delta One suite' would not be confused by the use of the word in its ordinary sense." The word "flagship" is generally used to refer to the most important, most prominent, or best of something, and no one taking the word in that sense would be led to assume that it was being used to refer to any American Airlines product."