CK • Washington.   Sämtliche Markenqualitäten nach dem Bun­desmarkengesetz erörterte die Revision am 29. August 2018 in AuSable River Trading Post v. Dovetail Solutions Inc., als ein T-Shirt-Drucker die vom Veranstalter eines Win­terfestes einge­tra­ge­ne Marke für das Fest als unwirksam an­focht und ohne Lizenz abdrucken wollte. Die Marken nach ein­zel­staat­li­chem Recht und Common Law spielen in der Entscheidung kei­ne Rolle. Im Ergebnis gewinnt die Inhaberin nach der lesenswerten Darstellung und Wür­digung des Lanham Act:

No matter how you slice it, the term "Perchville" is inherently di­stinctive. The name does not refer to a place. It serves only "to iden­tify a particular" event, namely the annual winter festival in Ta­was. … The word almost certainly counts as fanciful, and at the very least is sufficiently suggestive to qualify as an inherently distinctive tra­de­mark.

"Perchville" bears a classic feature of a fanciful mark. Someone ma­de up the name "for the sole purpose of ser­ving as a tra­de­mark." … According to a longtime Tawas-area journalist and bu­si­ness owner, Perchville's founders coined the name in 1949. The word bears no independent meaning. You cannot find "Perchville" in a dictionary or use it outside of Tawas in everyday conversation. Even the Trading Post admits that "Perchville" refers only to "the annual winter festival in Tawas."

Unlike a typical fanciful word, Perchville is not nonsense and so also qualifies as a suggestive mark. The name "Perchville" consists of a mash-up of two otherwise real expressions: the fish "perch" plus the suffix "-ville," used to signify "the names of fictitious places or concepts denoting a particular quality." … The meaning of the in­no­vation is not intuitive. Astute listeners, as the district court ob­ser­ved, might wonder whether the "term refers to so­me­thing like a gathering of fishermen." … But even that requires "ima­gi­na­tion and per­ception," making Perchville the type of in­he­rently distinctive name that the Lanham Act protects.