This full-length treatment of the law of trademarks in the United States begins by presenting a thorough discussion of why we protect trademarks. It delves into the theoretical justifications that support trademark protection, including law and economics, notions of freedom of competition, and cultural justifications. The book is unique in the field in that it presents trademark infringement early rather than later in the semester. The idea behind making infringement an early subject is that all of trademark law was originally a common-law subject. As such, it was all judge-made and cases arose only when someone sued someone else for trademark infringement. Students are thus able to study all of the later chapters with the ability to hold the specific subject matter in context.

 

Additional chapters focus on obtaining trademark rights, retention of trademark rights, registration of trademark rights, and loss of trademark rights. Another unique characteristic of this book is that it gives complete, comprehensive coverage of dilution law and domain name law (covering both the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy). No other textbook on the market provides such comprehensive coverage of these two timely topics in Trademark Law.