U.S. Ninth Circuit Revives Initial Interest Confusion in Amazon Trademark Case

Managing Intellectual Property referenced Finnegan's Incontestable Blog post in its July 15 article discussing the Multi Time Machine v. Amazon.com case. Multi Time Machine (MTM) makes Special Ops watches, which are a type of military-style watches that are not sold on Amazon. However, if a customer searches "MTM Special Ops" on Amazon's website, the search results show similar watches made by MTM's competitors, rather than informing customers that are no search results for "MTM Special Ops" and then displaying competitor products. MTM believes that displaying the search results in this matter will cause confusion for the customer. A Ninth Circuit panel was not certain that MTM would be able to prove the "initial interest confusion" theory, but the panel did suggest that clear labeling could eliminate the likelihood of confusion.