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Intellectual Property Keyed to Merges
The Murphy Door Bed Co., Inc. v. Interior Sleep Systems, Inc.
Facts
William Lawrence Murphy invented and manufactured a bed at the turn of the century that could be concealed in a wall closet when not in use. He was issued a patent in 1918 and has used the words “Murphy bed” as a trademark for the concealed beds since the Murphy Door Bed Company (MDBC) (Plaintiff) was founded in 1925. In 1918, the Patent and Trademark Office denied Plaintiff’s application to register the Murphy bed trademark because the words “Murphy bed” had become generic and the phrase only provided a description of the goods. In 1984 the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) affirmed the denial of registration. Interior Sleep Systems, Inc. (Interior Sleep) (Defendant) entered into a distributorship agreement with Plaintiff in 1981 and, when it learned of the TTAB’s denial of MDBC’s application for trademark registration, it began using the term “Murphy bed” in the title of a new corporation that made the same type of beds. When Plaintiff sued, the district court found that the name Murphy was not generic because a secondary meaning had been attributed to it by the general public, and that the common law of trademark protected MDBC (Plaintiff). The court found that Interior Sleep (Defendant) had not met its burden to demonstrate abandonment of the Murphy trademark. Defendant appealed, claiming that because the Murphy mark was not registered, the court erred in shifting the burden of proof to them.
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