In the blue corner wearing the charity shorts, United Way. In the red corner noshing an apple, the Lafayette Parish School System.
Let us now mix some metaphors: United Way Worldwide is taking off the gloves against the LPSS, threatening to punch the school system with a trademark lawsuit if it doesn’t jettison the name of a program that provides training to teachers and child-care providers of pre-K children in the parish.
The LPSS’s program, Success by 5 Alliance, has a similar name to United Way Worldwide’s long-established Success by 6 early childhood-development initiative. United Way has a federal trademark for Success by 6 and is warning the LPSS not to even try to trademark Success by 5 Alliance because the two sound too similar and will likely confuse 3-year-olds and adults.
The LPSS hired an outside firm to represent it, and according to an account in The Advertiser:
Barring a settlement or agreement between the two parties, the matter could linger in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board for more than a year, according to a timeline provided in the documents. The school board has until Sept. 16 to issue a formal answer to the United Way’s opposition, thus setting off a potentially lengthy process of discovery, disclosures and rebuttals.
Read more here, but be warned: You cannot un-read it.