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23 August 2016Trademarks

Thank you and good night: Citigroup drops AT&T trademark claim

Citigroup has dismissed its trademark infringement claim against AT&T following a failed request for a preliminary injunction that sought to prevent the telecoms company from using the terms ‘Thanks’ and ‘Thank You’.

Citigroup dismissed all the claims against AT&T with prejudice in a document filed on August 22 at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In turn, AT&T dismissed its counterclaim with prejudice. Each party will bear its own attorneys' fees and costs.

Dismissing a case with prejudice means that the same lawsuit cannot be reignited at a later date.

Citigroup had claimed that AT&T’s reward programme called ‘AT&T Thanks’ infringed trademarks it owns for terms including ‘ThankYou’ and ‘Citi ThankYou’, used for its own customer loyalty schemes.

Citigroup sued AT&T at the New York court in June. In seeking a preliminary injunction, Citigroup claimed that AT&T’s use of the marks was likely to cause confusion and constituted unfair competition, false designation of origin and trademark infringement.

But in a judgment, published on August 11, Judge Katherine Forrest rejected the request.

Forrest ruled that “dozens upon dozens” of companies had used the terms and that an injunction preventing AT&T from using them was not justified.

On April 7 this year AT&T applied to trademark ‘AT&T thanks’ at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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More on this story

Trademarks
19 August 2016   Citigroup has lost its attempt to prevent telecoms company AT&T from using the terms ‘Thanks’ and ‘Thank You’, following a failed request for a preliminary injunction.
Trademarks
13 June 2016   Financial services corporation Citigroup has sued telecoms company AT&T for trademark infringement.