Rolling Back the Years: 'Initial Interest Confusion' Returns

In 2013, Multi Time Machine (MTM) filed a lawsuit in district court against Amazon.com claiming trademark infringement. MTM makes Special Ops military watches, and in an effort to brand its watches as a luxury product, the company chooses not to sell its watches on Amazon. However, when a user searches for “MTM Special Ops” on Amazon’s website, the search results direct the user to similar watches sold by MTM’s competitors. MTM cited the ‘initial interest confusion’ doctrine, stating that customers will likely be confused by the search results. The district court sided with Amazon, ruling that the search results were not likely to cause confusion and that Amazon was not liable for infringement. However, on July 6, 2015, a Ninth Circuit appeals court overturned the district court’s decision, ruling that “initial interest confusion” may apply. Trademarks & Brands Online reached to Finnegan partner Brett Heavner for his thoughts on “initial interest confusion” as is applies to this case. 

Heavner said, “[Initial interest confusion] has not popped up in a long time. It arose when people were not that sophisticated on the internet, but now most people do their shopping online as opposed to brick-and-mortar stores. It was used to address bad business practice on the internet in its early days, but now the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy procedures are able to tackle this.”