Cisco loses logo lawsuit against WiFi inventor boffinhaus Cisco's suffered a legal reversal in Australia, where the nation's Trade Marks Office has ruled the logo of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is not an attempt to imitate or cash in on the Borg's bridge badge. CSIRO's logo is supposed to be a stylised map of Australia. Cisco's …
Interesting read, The linked document is worth looking at.
Lots of similarities, blue white, vertical stripes, a picture, capitals, begins with C ends in O.
Different font, different shade of blue, different badge shape.
Both are revamps of earlier different logos. CSIRO was blue before with stripes. And more like its current logo.
I feel Cisco were right to bring it up and the TMO were right to throw it out.
I see it.
Yes, the fonts are different but they share many important similarities.
I think it's similar enough that Cisco probably needed to challenge to make sure that they are seen to protect their marks, as this is a requirement of actually keeping them and winning future cases that are more of an issue.
So, I guess I agree with MJI, above - it is right that it didn't succeed but it is close enough that it was probably prudent from Cisco to make a (legal) point of it. A pity it wasted everyone's time but that's the reality of a world fast losing all common sense in such matters.
...an attempt to be mistaken for Cisco - a company I detest. I think Cisco got a bad decision and hopefully will win on appeal. There is no doubt in my mind that consumers could easily mistake the two graphics and that's precisely why CSIRO's looks so similar to Cisco's design.
@DougS
The problem is that the way trademark law is, you have to actively protect your marks. If you don't then you can lose the ability to challenge those who are infringing.
If you allow (by neglecting to challenge) someone to use a mark that is similar to yours then that 'dilutes' the strength of your mark and the courts consider it that much weaker when you do go to challenge one. In other words, the more people are using marks similar to yours, the less an otherwise infringing mark can be said to weaken your mark - it's already weak.
We can't infer Cisco's real intentions but we can say that their choice to pursue this maintains their legal position and claim to their mark for the future.
I don't like the process but that's not something Cisco can't change - they have to work within the existing structure.
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