Trademark Enforcement and Statutory Incentives

Authors

• Leah Chan Grinvald, Suffolk University School of Law

Abstract

The combination of the recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Romag Fasteners v. Fossil Group, Inc., and the diamond anniversary of the Lanham Act provides good grounds to reflect on how trademark enforcement and statutory incentives have evolved through the years. Although enforcement of one's trademarks through the use of the courts can be traced back to England in the 1790s, trademark litigation and other enforcement activities have exploded, in relative terms, since the enactment of the Lanham Act in 1946. Although not subject to an easy empirical correlation, this trend suggests that the statute has had an impact on increasing the incentives to enforce one's trademark. This Article examines this evolution, attempting to highlight which changes could be providing increased incentives to trademark owners to aggressively enforce-and in some cases, over-enforce-their marks.

Disciplines

Antitrust and Trade Regulation | Consumer Protection Law | Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law | Food and Drug Law | Intellectual Property Law | Law

Recommended Citation

Leah C. Grinvald, Trademark Enforcement and Statutory Incentives, 39 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 931 (2021).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/cardozoaelj/vol39/iss3/6