Domain Name Wire

.Ping trademark in jeopardy, but Ping sailing through

PING golf manufacturer still has a TLD trademark going through the system.

Last month I wrote about how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had caught on to an trademark application for .Ping.

It was filed by Karsten Manufacturing, which owns the PING line of golf products.

Although the USPTO has a policy of not allowing trademarks for top level domain names, .Ping had proceeded to publication until it was caught by an examiner.

But I just noticed another application (85,441,399) Karsten filed that has proceeded to publication: “Ping”. There’s no dot at the beginning, but the “Goods and Services” description makes it clear what it’s for:

Domain name registration services; Registration of domain names for identification of users on a global computer network

That’s the same description the company used for .Ping. If Karsten were to get this trademark then it could try to use it against anyone else that decides to apply for .ping as a top level domain.

There’s another interesting application from Karsten as well. Take a look at application 85,453,143 for “PING” for “Chat room services for social networking; Providing on-line chat rooms for social networking”. The company says it’s been using this term in commerce since 2010, and provides a screenshot of something from iTunes to back up this claim. I really don’t understand what this screenshot represents, but it seems peculiar. Especially since “ping” is a perfectly reasonable name for a chat service.

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Related posts:

1. USPTO to Karsten: not so fast with .PING
2. Ping Golf Considers .Ping Top Level Domain Name
3. Ping Golf Loses Ping.me Domain Name Arbitration

Tags: Policy & Law