Court Finds "Pinning" On the Internet To Be Fair Use (docketalarm.com)

speedplane writes: Pinterest has always aggressively defended their trademarks, but in 2013, they launched a trademark lawsuit against Pintrips, a travel planning startup that allows users to "pin" and share information about flights. Yesterday, however, a federal court issued a major ruling against Pinterest finding that "pinning" is a feature, not a trademark, and therefore is fair use. This seems to bode well for the many other "pinning" sites on the internet.

Comments

Re:Pin???

[gmack]

Too bad for them. I've been "pinning" locations on maps since I was a child in the 80s.

Re: Pin???

[speedplane]

fair use relates to copyright, so the court almost certainly didn't rule it was fair use

There is fair use in trademark too. Here's the quote from the judge (page 35):

After weighing the evidence presented at trial and considering the arguments made by the parties, the Court concludes that Pintrips satisfies the first two elements of the fair use analysis in that it uses the term pin “otherwise than as a mark” and “only to describe [its] goods or services.” 15 U.S.C. 1115(b)(4).