ING has filed a trademark lawsuit against PNC Bank.  ING Groep NV, the biggest Dutch bank, accused PNC Financial Services Group Inc. of fraud in a trademark-infringement lawsuit over the use of orange-ball logos in bank marketing.

PNC misled the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office when the Pittsburgh-based lender asserted Oct. 29 that the new orange- logo trademarks on its youth-oriented Web site faced no legal challenges, ING said yesterday in a filing in Delaware federal court. ING’s online-banking unit, ING Direct, sued more than two months earlier to block PNC’s use of the logos.

PNC’s intellectual-property lawyer, Robert Pugh, who signed the patent office document, “knew that the declaration was false” and “knew this litigation was pending,” ING Direct said in court papers seeking to block PNC’s use of the logos and restrict its use of the color orange.

ING, based in Amsterdam, claims PNC’s display of bouncing orange balls as Web links on a site for its “Virtual Wallet” product will confuse customers who might be looking for ING. The Dutch bank uses bright orange balls on its Web sites, marketing materials and billboard advertisements. 

Salt Lake City International Airport has filed a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration.  The airport claims that the TSA’s use of SimpliFLY infringes the airport’s use of the identical mark (which it has registered with the USPTO) for travel assistance services.

TSA posters and videos tell passengers to “SimpliFLY” — an effort to give screeners a better view of what’s inside carry-on bags going through X-ray machines.

As a relatively frequent flier who has come to believe that the TSA does very little to actually simply the process or even make it pleasant, this lawsuit brought a smile to my face.

NCAA

The E.U.’s second highest court rejected Anheuser-Busch InBev’s effort to secure a CTM trademark registration of BUDWEISER.  Czech state-owned brewer Budweiser Budvar NP  had complained that the BUDWEISER trademark was identical to its trademark and therefore couldn’t be registered by Budweiser.  OHIM agreed with Budvar, and the Court of First Instance Wednesday upheld the OHIM’s decision.

The court’s decision won’t hurt AB InBev’s ability to sell Budweiser under the trademark “Budweiser” or “Bud” in most E.U. countries, said spokeswoman Marianne Amssoms.

“The decision does not impact the Budweiser and Bud rights AB InBev still owns in individual member states,” she said. “These national trademarks remain strong and intact.”

AB InBev owns either the Budweiser or Bud trademarks in 23 of the 27 E.U. countries, she said.

Being a trademark attorney and having been in the Czech Republic about a year ago, here is a BUDWEISER BUDVAR coaster:

+ Here

Wishing our readers a happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Be sure to find us at the INTA Annual Meeting in Seattle.

A tussle over the use of the name Zap, pitting global mobile giant Zain against a local detergent manufacturer, could be headed to the corridors of justice this morning after a 14-day wait for justice came to an end last night.

Ngoko Enterprises, a small company trading in cleaning agents, hopes to stop Zain from using the name Zap for its mobile money transfer product, claiming that Zain is trampling on its rights as the original owners of the Zap trade-mark.

By the time we went to press on Monday, the Registrar for Trademarks had not responded within the stipulated 14- day period to Ngoko’s plea of infringement by Zain, meaning Ngoko Enterprises may now proceed to court and sue Zain.

I am hardly an expert on African trademark law.  However, it seems to me that there is pretty much no likelihood of confusion between ZAP for mobile phones and phone services and ZAP for detergent.  Call me crazy; that’s how I feel.