Do these two logos look the same to you? Is there the remotest chance that you might confuse Intellife Travel, a small travel agency in Santa Clara, California that caters to Chinese Americans and expats, with Intel the company? You know, the one that makes computer chips.
Me neither. But tell that to Intel’s trademark lawyers, who filed a lawsuit against Intellife on September 18 for trying “to cause confusion that Intel is the source or sponsor of Intellife’s services” and “dilution of the INTEL trademark.” There are serious trademark lawsuits and there are frivolous ones. This appears to be the latter. We are not talking about a situation like with Scrabulous borrowing whole hog from Scrabble. This is about two syllables that overlap. The complaint, which we’ve obtained, is embedded below.
We’ve also obtained the communications between Zhang and Intel’s outside law firm leading up to this complaint. It shows how a seemingly boilerplate inquiry can lead to a full-blown lawsuit, and sheds some light onto the bullying tactics large companies such as Intel routinely employ in the name of protecting their trademarks and other intellectual property. After all, Intellife is a two man-shop that can hardly afford to take on a corporate giant like Intel, which has about $40 billion in annual revenues. But so far, Intellife refuses to budge. It’s name, by the way, stands for “Intelligent International Lifestyle”
About a year before the compliant was filed, in August, 2007, Intellife’s president and owner Faith Zhang received a seemingly routine letter from one of Intel’s outside lawyers, Raffi Zerounian, who wanted to learn more about what products or services the small firm markets under the Intellife name to determine whether Intel’s trademark was being damaged.
The very next day, Zhang promptly replied with his own letter stating:
Intellife Travel, Inc. is a travel agency specializing in airline tickets between the US and Greater China region. We plan to continue to focus on providing the best possible travel booking experience to our customers. To the best of our knowledge, Intel does not have a travel agency business. In fact, prior to receiving your letter, neither we nor any of our customers had correlated our name to Intel Corporation.
I hope that this letter clarifies our company’s activities and plans. You may visit our website at http://www.intellifetravel.com to get more information. Let me emphasize that we absolutely have no intention of, nor can we benefit from, leveraging the Intel brand name. Can you notify us by letter that this matter has been resolved?
Before the end of the month, he received another letter from Intel’s lawyer (the second embedded document below). This one was not so friendly. The lawyer suggested that Zhang change the name of his business to avoid legal action, informing him:
Intel’s use of the INTEL brand spans the fields of computers, communications, networking, and the Internet. Additionally, the INTEL brand is used on such varied products and services as consumer electronics, publications, and financial services, as well as secondary promotional items including clothing, luggage, writing utensils, stationary, plush toys, golf balls, and numerous other novelty items.
Apparently, Intel’s brand covers everything from luggage to golf balls. Who knew? This time Zhang decided to get his own lawyer, who sent a strongly worded defense of Intellife’s right to keep its name (the third embedded document below). Among his arguments were that the two companies don’t offer similar products or services,, their respective logos look nothing alike, there is no evidence any consumer was actually confused, and that marks need to be “viewed in their entirety, and not ‘dissected’ into components.”
That seemed to do the trick. Until a little more than a year later, when Intel decided to file its suit. What took it so long? Who knows. Maybe it had a big backlog of other trademark suits to get through first.
The Complaint:
Intel’s (Earlier) Second Lawyer Letter to Intellife:
Intellife’s Lawyer Letter Back:
Time to go AMD
What the hell is Intel thinking? This is the most stupid Intel act. I cannot believe it.
Their lawyers are probably just trying to find something to do.
AMDlife travel
Maybe they should move to Seattle, and start MicrosoftLife Travel or StarbucksLife Travel.
Oooooh, damn, I thought Intellife was the one selling me a computer. I must have been misled, damn those devious trademark diluting devils
I know trademark holders have to enforce their mark to keep it, but enforcing it against companies where there’s absolutely zero chance of confusion is just a waste of the little guy’s money and the court’s time. Horrible.
what an incredible waste of time and money. intel should be ashamed.
Intel lawyers need retirement,that’s it !
sign of a desperate economy. everyone is dying for work. there is more money in failure than efficiency.
building and protecting trademarks is a very complex discipline. intellife may not be confused with intel with brilliant minds like yourselves but then then other similar sounding names could be confused by ordinary people who dont work in computer industry – e.g. intelcards (not the graphics cards but business cards, you know) , intelgames, intelblahblah. this is why companies take a hard stand on these issues to protect their brand and trademarks.
Thats a very intelligent remark. Oops, trademark violation, so I take it back. Its actually a pretty dumb remark.
no its not. you are too dumb to understand trademarks and how they are protected. @prof makes good point about trademark protection.
Intel desperately trying to come into the news for some reason ?.
I have to believe that Intel doesn’t hire dumb lawyers, so there is probably more to the story. I predict that in a month or so we will see the unveiling of a new Intel marketing campaign dubbed “Intel Life”. This successor to the stunning “VIIV” brand will probably turn out to be a competitor to Mobile Me. Here’s hoping that their launch of it goes more smoothly than Apple’s did!
Sounds about right.
Depends on how you pronounce the words
if its
“INTEL LIFE” – one would reasonably argue that there is a case. i.e. if you pronounce the words “INTELLIFE” you do actually say “INTEL … LIFE” and one could argue a reasonable person would draw a connection. You could probably stretch this to “INTELLI …. LIFE” as a pronunciation.
of course, if you flip it – and the word is pronounced more like “IN TEL LIFE” i.e. “in to life” – then INTEL might not have a leg to stand on.
The problem is what the reasonable and ordinary person would do ?
There are thousands of instances of cases like this – “Virgin” being one of the worst offenders followed by Coke with their ridicolous litigation over the word “Cola”.
I agree its stupid, but on the flip side – if you owned a billion dollar trademark, you would want to defend it at all costs.
It takes many billions to make and sustain a great name, takes almost nothing to destroy it. If this company was dodgy and some stupid reporter got onto it and posted a connection with corruption etc etc with Intel – imagine the outrage. People very much forget whether or not there is truth to the situation.
Hence the reason the whole area is so litigated.
Trademark law is lots of fun. An interesting point about trademarks is that two different companies can have the same mark registered in different classifications. Also to be able to defend a mark you have to prove that you made use of it in the appropriate class – in other words, they would have to prove they operated a travel agent, whilst holding the appropriate classification.
Intel’s claim revolves around the presupposition that the word ‘Intel’ constitutes their brand and trademark. If a golf ball had ‘Intel’ written on it in Times New Roman, would you associate it with the Intel brand? Probably not. If I were to defend this case (and I am not a trademark lawyer) my defense would revolve around this fact. ‘Intel’, the word, is an abbreviation of ‘Intelligent’ or more commonly (eg. in the government) ‘intelligence’. As such it is in common use and is unenforcible. If I had a bottomless pile of cash, I would attack with this and then they would settle without judgment to avoid setting a precedent.
Having said that, who is going to defend against Intel Corp? The best you could hope to do is stir up enough bad publicity that they drop it..
Intelligroup,Intelligraph…what about these companies?
btw, Intel stands for Integrated Electronics.Not sure why these companies pick that intel part when they are not into chip business??
Yeah why would other companies want to use something that stands for integrated electronics? They obviously lack….
Main Entry: intel
Part of Speech: n
Definition: abbr. for intelligence, esp. military or business; information
Intel Plus Toys I’ve never heard of. But those Intel Golf balls – yeah sure! They have 95% of the golf ball market, I’m sure. Is Intel getting a little soft in the head? Leave that 2-man startup alone, you big stupid bully.
I’d guess that Intel have a plan that involves the moniker Intel Life. Think of the IP lawyers as a ground clearance team before the marketers move in.
If that is true then these guys have a valuable trademark since they are essentially blocking Intel from using “Intel Life”. Especially since it looks like Intel’s attorney has already admitted as much.
I wonder if these travel agent guys can make some money by selling their name to some patent-troll type lawyer who would turn it around and extract huge legal fees from Intel for trademark infringement of “IntelLife”?
If that is the case, then these travel agent guys own a valuable trademark. They should put it up on eBay. If Intel doesn’t bid high enough, some troll-lawyer may snap it up and try to extract a fat licensing fee from Intel!
Hey, Intrepid TechCrunch Reporters — whatever happened with that lawyers-run-amok case you reported on a couple of months ago where some troll claimed to have patented the idea of the Grocery List and was suing tiny little 1-2 person software companies? Did they manage to drive any of those out of business? http://www.tech...fers-wishlists/
You should all get an inteli life, you have too much time to waste!!!
It seems more likely that they have plans to use “IntelLife” as a brand themselves in the future, so are trying to squash anyone who got there first.
That was exactly my thought, it seems that Intel is trying to safeguard their future assets by sueing these people, in fact when intel would, in the future, launch a service or product by the name intellife intel itself could be subject to a law suit.
It’s a shame this doesn’t get more media attention since in my opinion this would hurt Intel’s reputation alot and that is just what they deserve by taking this kind of legal actions.
Good point mikep, that’s the real reason behind it.
There are a lot of companies who think, that the world belongs to them.
A blatent example is the METRO group which has also registered its trademark for every trademark class. With this they even tried to sue the Paris Metro Tube company, the Berlin based Metro Bus or people who use the popular word metrosexual, but lukily lost all the cases.
It’s also worth noting that this is basically down the street in Santa Clara from a 20,000 person Intel campus. Any Fortune 100 company has countless services for their employees that have nothing to do with chip manufacturing (Intel Travel, hello?). Given the large foreign workforce at Intel, Intellife could be seen as positioning themselves to work with Intel employees in Santa Clara under the guise that they are sanctioned by Intel.
It amazes me the lengths at which some people are willing to go to rationalize stupid/abusive behavior.
It amazes me the lengths at which some people are willing to go to rationalize their lack of understanding of trademark law and how to protect them. Intel has invested Billions in creating a name, brand and they have a right to protect it from dilution/confusion.
Intellife now have a petition on their site which supporters can sign. They claim the information will not be shared with anyone outside of the company
Strange… Might be Intel is planning a new publicity campaign around Intel and Life …
BTW.. intellife.com is up for grabs, http://whois.do...m/intellife.com
Good luck protecting whats ‘yours’ in China.
Intellife’s response was quite well written!
Are you f’ing kidding me?? Lookat how THEY blatantly stole a logo by EcoGeek a few months ago and barely apologized:
http://www.ecog...tent/view/1900/
Can anyone explain if there is a penalty for a large company like Intel losing this case? Can Intellife counter-sue for their court costs? I feel a way to prevent fraudulent (yes, this is stupid) cases like this would be to levy a fine for frivolous lawsuits.
Do attorneys realize that when they file a questionable lawsuit like this, it hurts the reputation for the company? I applaud techcrunch for calling intel out here.
Loser Pays – something we don’t have in the US
can they take away guy’s domain name? I can understand the logo as is. But what if his logo only said or intellifetravel.com?
Wait…so you’re telling me my laptop isn’t powered by “Intelifetravel” inside? You know, those talking chip ads on TV?
It’s two syllables overlapping, but the first one clearly say Intel. It’s not Inilfe or Intellilife, it’s Intel Life. I think Intel has an arguement.
this is what’s wrong with america.
That’s funny; you can pretty much respond with that basket line to anything and it will still sound credible, all the while freeing you from offering any kind of argument whatsoever.
This is what’s wrong with America.
A line like “this is what’s wrong with America” implies that the argument against the issue is obvious (and, in this case, it is). It is a form of sarcasm and humor. And, yes, one of the reasons it works so well is its simplicity and resistance to criticism. It’s unfortunate that you are unable to fully appreciate the situation. No wonder your parents named you “Not a Fan of Idiots”.
John: Convenient. but if you read the comments over here or CNet, that cliché is spouted again and again, in huffing Rush Limbaugh style, without substance. That this suffices as a complete discussion of an issue is very troubling.
Positions for or against any issue are never so simple that “they are obvious”. Either you think with your own head or you don’t; if complex realities fit in few words, and you are satisfied with that, odds are that you don’t.
By that logic if someone trademarks Int, In or I, then that puts Intel in the wrong ? With that logic, the branding world would be composed of only 26 brands (33 in Russia)
i think these travel agents should change their name. Not because they’re in the wrong – they’re not, but if I was them I wouldn’t want anyone associating my brand with Intel. That would be doing me a disservice
Ooooh, But why? What the reason? I’m so curious…
The origin of the name Intel are steeped in the vernacular, where Intel has meant Intelligence (in both senses of the term) for decades before they even were formed. The daily meaning of the term isn’t exhausted by their use of that name to produce small silicon wafers, and the rest of the world is, in my mind, free to keep using to mean what is obviously lacking in this lawyer’s mind: intelligence.
Plush toys, Intel, really, you shouldn’t have.
Even if you were born with the name ‘Macdonalds’, the corp will sue you for operating a 30 years old hot dog stand. True story.
We have lost our way and our decency. Some of us anyhow.
In fact, I guess this is a subsidiary of Intel on my first impression:)But Intel to bring a lawsuit against this travel agency also too to exaggerate.
Crazy news! I hope Intel loses.
good for Intellife Travel … got some cheap publicity
We recently received very similar letters from the same Intel’s lawyers firm.
Intelways.com , a web search tool, is to be shut down on next december 2008 because of a sue threat by Intel Corp., due to alleged infringement of the INTEL mark. We did never agree with their infringement claims, and at some point we wanted to fight but after talking to specialized attorneys, it was clear that this was going to be David vs. Goliath.
http://www.intelways.com
Lawyers with too much time on their hands.
Absolutely ridiculous. This is why we need a “loser pays” system here, like the one I understand they have in the UK – if you lose the case, you pay the other guy’s legal fees. Then a small company like Intellife doesn’t face the implied threat from a bully like Intel that “even if you’re right, we’ll bankrupt you with legal costs – so just give up now and save yourselves the trouble”.
Intel recently settled with another firm to change their name. Can’t mention it by name but “intel” was in there.
As for another interesting trademark case go to nissan.com
Please, Intel ought to know what battles to pick; this one makes them look bad. Like a bully. Perhaps it’s time to show Intel’s lawsuit-trigger happy lawyer to the door?
If somebody traemarked Intel Chips and sold potato chips, would they have a case – these are CLEARLY two distinct classes of goods…
let’s start a fund and do it, and see what happens, i’ll put in $1 towards a trademark of intel chips
Imagine if the company was named NikeLifeTravel or CokeLifeTravel.
Would it then be outrageous if they were sued by Nike or Coke?
I think the key here is “Intel” seems generic. The problem is if they don’t enforce their trademark this time… someone may come up with IntelMp3 and claim that “Intel” is generic since Intel didn’t go after IntelLifeTravel.
Thats the thing about trademarks. You can’t selectively enforce it or you lose the right to it.
has intel stopped making chips. Intel should sue the english dictionary for having the word intelligent in that case
David vs Goliath, that’s why small business can’t do their best to survive, I suppose big efforts from Intellife Travel and Intelways to position their brands in their markets; Must Golliat Intel to pay for this? Could SMBA lawyers help them?
How about a company that manufactures games designed around spying and recon – you know, “intel” – call it “Intel Games”
Holy CRAP!
Jeff Yablon
President & CEO
Virtual VIP
Thank you for your comment spam Yablon.
Just want to make a correction that (from reading the message in Chinese on their web site) that Faith Zhang is a woman. (You seem to be referring to her with a “he” in your article consistently) Also, she mentioned in her message on the web site, that she does not think negatively of Intel and believe Intel wouldn’t bully small shops like hers, and she believes it must be the intention of the outside lawyers here to just make money.
I also would like to translate some important parts of her message that you didn’t include — To a travel agency, changing a business name is a huge loss of business income. All commission checks made to the travel agency’s old name cannot be cashed. To change an agency name means having to go through hundreds of flight companies, hotels, rental companies.
—
It is funny because these lawyers are basically saying “Intellife gives Intel a bad name”, right…. but the mere fact that this lawsuit happened and this came on TechCrunch — it is exactly these lawyers’ acts that gave Intel a bad name.
Can some smart lawyers represent Intel and sue these lawyers for this?
Since you didn’t read the pdfs, I’ll add that changing the business name should not be a concern. There are two reasons why:
1) the entity does not need to “do business” under the old name in order to cash checks. They merely need to maintain the LLC with the old name to preserve that right
2) Intel offered them the opportunity to negotiate a transitionary term to alleviate their losses
For all of those who think Intel is a bully… do you really think this travel agency is so oblivious to Intel’s trademark that it did not occur to them they would be violating it? Intel is perfectly within its rights to preserve its trademark.
And did any of you legal experts stop to think whether the slimy one here was not actually Zhang? As if she didn’t know what she was doing. Really… the only reason she is hanging on here is for the chance to receive a settlement check.
You seem to be excessively interested in defending the lawyers acting on this. Since you didn’t read my message, I mentioned that Faith Zhang does not think of Intel as a bully. The ridiculousness comes from the lawyers and I agree. These outside lawyers are trying to make money any way they want. Like other commenters have said, we know they’re gonna win, and we also know they’re scums. Nothing we can do about it, nothing you can do to change our minds. The main article is already posted on TC. These comments don’t even matter.
The letter from Intel’s lawyer invites intellife to make a small name change. Doesn’t sound like bullying to me.
This is a case of Intel’s “Lawyers Gone Wild”
At least Intel is being consistent. Here in the UK, British Telecom (BT), one of the largest telcos in the world, wanted to give one of their products the name “BT Intellact” – I think it was a call routing system of some kind. No sooner had they murmured the name to marketing agencies, Intel lawyers promptly threatened them with huge damage claims, even though the product was only tenuously related to computing and the name itself was prefixed with the letters “BT” (a household name in the UK), as all BT products usually are.
BT gave in to Intel’s demands, but had paid a lot of money for a branding agency to come up with the name. So they decided to keep the name for their company intranet – a name it still has today.
You can thank Bush government for signing a bill which resulted into a new trademark law. According to this law, if you can prove that someone’s business or trademark is causing confusion and diluting the value of your trademark, then you can sue them and get an injunction. Unethical trademark lawyers around the nation are using this bill to harass small guys. Once again Bush prevailed
What exactly are you implying that Intel has to gain from all of this?
The only thing I can think of is protecting their precious and expensive trademark from dilution and the huge downside of bad association. I can’t imagine Intel has anything else to gain from this.
There is a perfectly standard case of trademark protection. As far as I know, there is nothing new about this case that is a result of Bush. Is there any chance you have a link or other information to back up this claim?
You just could not buy better advertising. Intellife Travel, Inc should thank Intel idiots for the amazing exposure and now everytime I see the intel logo on my PC I will think of Intellife Travel, Inc. Got to love idiot lawyers and big business.
If Intellife Travel, Inc set up a fund for legal costs let me know I will donate!!
Ooops… you are forgetting that intellife is 99% likely to lose (Intel wins these cases all the time and has many precedents). When they do, all of their new press goes down the toilet.
For example: in the future, when you see “Intel” and you think of “Intellife Travel, Inc.” and you type in their url that is redirected to intel.com, you are going to wonder why your brain comes up with that useless stale link. All the great advertising isn’t worth a hill of beans.
So what… you and 6 other people who care will each donate $10 to the defense fund? Gee thanks! Zhang is going to be so relieved that the world is on her side.
I’m in. Make that 7 people.
Well, actions like this makes Intel look very greedy, stupid and mean. No one likes a bully. I am going to not use any products by Intel or associated by Intel now if I can possibly avoid it.
So how exactly does this equate to greed? Is it greedy to keep their trademark all to themselves?
Or should Intel be “generous” and allow anyone and everyone the opportunity to leverage their marketing $$, all the while diluting their trademark and losing the right to defend it in the future when there is not only blatant infringement but also potentially an implied association with a company with questionable business.
Since you have surely read the pdfs, you should already know how the precedents factor into their ability to defend their trademark. If they let anyone get away with infringement, they will have no leg to stand on next time it happens.
I read the pdf. Here’s what Intel’s asking for from Intellife. This is greed:
Under “PRAYER FOR RELIEF”
6. A judgment in the amount of Intel’s actual damages, Intellife’s profits, Intel’s reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs of suit, and pre-judgment interest pursuant to 15 U.S.C. 1117;
IntelLife is looking to make money here. They are the greedy party. Big companies like Intel don’t bring lawsuits like this lightly. I bet IntelLife was unreasonable in its demands. Now, they want our money to help them? I am not sure for what.
It’s fair, honestly I’d think of Intel the first time I read intellife