Intellectual Property

Introduction

Carrying out businesses in any part of the world is highly regulated, mainly to ensure fair competition and effective remittance of taxes and royalties. To manage a diverse environment where businesses and buyer interline, business law all over the world has established acceptable standards that are used to govern this interaction. One of these main laws relates to intellectual property. In simple terms, the discussion throughout our class reading helped me to understand that intellectual properties are basic regulation that helps in protecting business people who come up with an original idea. For example, if a company invents a unique name, it is protected by business rights to retain the name without facing the risk of name competition from others in the same of different industries. Intellectual property is enclosed in four main rights; patents rights, trademark rights, copyrights, as well as trade secret rights. The purpose of this report is to discuss the case of Andy King and his potential legal conflict with Burger King, and BMI/Imagine Dragons.

Trademark Basic Application

A trademark is basically a unique sing or name that allow a customer to easily notice or associate with a particular brand. In the case study presented, "Burger King" is a unique trademark that is recognized across the world. In his new business, Andy envisions to sell a burger. Since his full name is Andy King, he thought it is a great idea to incorporate his name in the business domain. "Andy The Burger King." However, this name does not go very well the business giant "Burger King." Hence, traction has risen between and Andy and the renowned business.

Legal Analysis

The legal exemplification of the case may show some incidences that Andy caused possible confusion among customers that are used to Burger King as a brand. This confusion mainly arises from the fact that, in his business domain, Andy used the phrase "Burger King," despite that 'King' is his second name. This confusion can be analyzed using the 8-part evidence of confusion

Strength of the Mark: The business name "Burger King" is very popular and uses specific font size and type to uniquely distinguish itself from other fast-food retailers. Since the case study indicates that Andy adopts the name in his business domain, it is clear it causes a strong confusion.

The similarity between the two marks: The prominent “burger King” trade is widely a franchise. Andy new business name looks very close to the original Burger King name. Therefore, the resemblance is outstanding, hence creating a confusing on customers.

The proximity of the products in the market: This evidence can be proved by how Andy names his products. For example, he sells Cuban sandwiches in two sizes: “The Regular” and “The Whopper.” Where; whopper is a common name of one of the Burger King’s main products.

Defendant has good faith in adopting the name: Andy is in good faith considering that his second name is ‘King.’ Apparently, he also wants to start a business of selling burgers and though it was a good idea to use both terms in his business domain. This leads to an innocent confusion.

Quality of Andy products: This may cause a significant business loss for the original Burger King business, mainly because customers are likely to have a perception that both businesses are interlinked.

The sophistication of the buyers: Customer are in the fast-food retail industry are pretty sophisticated, mainly due to quality and health concerns, Therefore, a small mistake of quality deterioration from Andy's business can easily be noticed by customers.