Arrgh! Using the screen and one conductor for transmission. What a potential nightmare that would be, and, as you say, not detectable except by inspection.

Behringer Oberheim trademark bid fails.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/behr...he-ub-xa-synth

Just the first round. I can't see them losing in the long run.

They previously won in a German court for the name when Gibson still owned it.

But in its rejection of Behringer's application the U.S. Patent Office left no stone unturned as far as why it won't grant it. It's another one of those things where in Europe (and probably elsewhere) Behringer got the OK to use the Oberheim name but in the U.S. it is being recognized as not an option due to Tom Oberheim being an actual person who is also trying to market synthesizers, and they never actually bought or negotiated for the use, as far as I can tell from these and other articles.

Interesting - this may eventually throw up some interesting case law: to quote:

Among the evidence cited is an article on MusicRadar, which reported on Gibson’s decision to “do the right thing” and give the Oberheim brand back to Tom Oberheim in 2019. Gibson took ownership of the Oberheim name in 1988, when the original company was declared bankrupt.

And yet Gibson's rights to take ownership of the name was not challenged at that time, and it seems fairly clear that Gibson could have produced Oberhiem products if it wanted to without any "marketplace confusion" that the synths were made by Tom Oberheim.

The rationale appears to be that if you purchase a trademark as part of a forced bankruptcy sale of assets, there will not be confusion that the goods are produced by the original owner, but there will be otherwise. This is difficult to square with the concept that the mark identifies a particular source of goods.

It implies that Tom Oberhiem could immediately sell the Oberheim trade mark to the "Super Golden Pheonix Manufacturing Company" of Shangdong , and that company could immediately make "Oberheim " synths without any problem of marketplace confusion, but if the trademark is registered by another because it has fallen out of use and been abandoned by the owner, different standards apply.

I assume this is currently at the phase of administrative appeal. If this ends up in court, it will make for an interesting opinion.

Gibson had ownership because they bought the rights to the company from the group who had purchased Oberheim when it went bankrupt, when that group went bankrupt. They put out some products and reissues, so it's not as if they'd left it dormant. They also licensed the Oberheim name, notably to Viscount.

Unless I'm missing something, Behringer just started using the name, assuming they'd wouldn't be successfully challenged, and the German decision bears that strategy out. But this is different than being sued and told to cease and desist. It's the U.S. Patent Office denying their application. on grounds that it's not theirs to apply for, that it's still in others ownership, in this case, now, back with Tom Oberheim.

Its my understanding that they applied to register the trademark on the grounds it was not in use, not that they "just started using the name, assuming they'd wouldn't be successfully challenged."

I came to this conclusion because the decision was apparently issued by the PTO. The PTO decides applications, but doesn't decide infringement cases.

If this was an infringement action by Tom Oberheim or Gibson, it would go to the federal courts for decision, (when dealing with trademark infringement claims, a federal district court will always have subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1338 and 15 U.S.C. § 1121) not an administrative agency like the PTO.

Cheers
MH