Reed Elsevier Loses Bid to Trademark `Lawyers.com'

From Bloomberg.com: "Reed Elsevier Loses Bid to Trademark `Lawyers.com' in the U.S.":

Reed Elsevier Plc, owner of the LexisNexis databases, lost a U.S. appeals court bid to trademark the phrase ``lawyers.com'' for its online legal information service.

Reed Elsevier's Martindale-Hubbell unit has run the lawyers.com Web site since 1998 and has been seeking trademark protection since then to limit others from using the lawyers.com name to confuse consumers.

The appeals court upheld a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision to reject the application. The agency had said the phrase was generic, pointing out that others use variations, such as Massachusetts-lawyers.com, medialawyer.com and truckerlawyers.com. Reed Elsevier argued that its site had ``acquired distinctiveness.''