Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Taco Bell Sues to Cancel 'Taco Tuesday' Trademark" video.

@soaringeagle5418 It's better than their first draft "make a run for the restroom." Test marketing that was disastrous, even with the possibility of an immodium tie in promotion.
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TBH, Taco Bell isn't very good, but they are everywhere. Taco Del Mar, Taco Time and Del Taco to name a few are all better. Not to mention just about any food truck serving tacos and actual Mexican restaurants.
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I was wondering about that. I see so many chains and restaurants around here with that promotion that I was wondering if they bothered to enforce it. It might be because I live far away from any of their locations. It looks like the closest location to me is roughly 140 miles away. I'm surprised it was even that close, they must be expanding.
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Sometimes things like that are genuinely faster and cheaper to resolve a suit. Presumably, there was some money changing hands in that case and Stevens got to have some standards to enforce with its use.
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@battleboat12 It is, but the fact that some people are using it doesn't necessary meet the standard. Alphabet still owns the trademark for Google, even though google is a pretty common term for searching for things now. It will eventually lose control over the trademark if that continues, but from what I can tell, nobody has tried to get the trademark removed as of now.
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TBH, they're massively overrated. Taco Time and Taco Del Mar are better, but from what I understand neither chain is nationwide. OTOH, congratulations on them winning the upcoming franchise wars.
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I don't, That's how trademarks work and it's not easy to separate the reasonable ones from the unreasonable ones. The fact that other chains had referenced it first isn't relevant to trademark disputes, these aren't patents. The relevant question is whether the rights were held by somebody else at the time and whether the term is sufficiently attached to the owner and defended. It's the defense bit that might be an issue, as I see an awful lot of taco places using the term currently and I doubt that all of them are paying a license fee or agree to specific rules from Taco Johns. I get the feeling that they trademarked it because they could at the time, and have used it, but haven't really bothered to defend it in the years since.
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@N1korasu Prior art doesn't apply to trademarks. So long as the intended trademark isn't already a generic term or owned by somebody else, the trademark is likely legal. Simply having another business in another part of the country using the term isn't likely to be sufficient to get the term tossed. There would likely have to be some form of confusion involved for that to apply. The biggest issue for them likely being that the term is effectively a generic at this point as taco tuesday is such a known phrase at this point and I'm not sure if Taco Johns has been enforcing any property rights over it prior to this challenge.
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Yes, you can do a search. My understanding though is that if you do the search and don't find a conflicting item and are found to be infringing that you've got to deal with treble damages. Whereas if you don't even try, that doesnt' apply. I'd hope that I"m wrong about that, because that's stupid.
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@battleboat12 Yes, a different sporting event sharing that name would almost certainly run afoul of the trademark, but if it were something that was completely unrelated and not trading off the tournament, it might be allowable. For example, a black friday style sale running during the same time might be able to use the term, provided that it didn't cause any confusion over a connection with the tournament other than being at the same time. But, using march madness in some other country where the tournament isn't a prominent thing likely wouldn't run afoul, even if the NCAA bothered to register it there. (Although, if it's that unnotable, they probably wouldn't bother to register it there, and as such there wouldn't be anything to infringe upon)
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