Green Medical Gloves Deemed Too Generic for Trademark Protection

A medical gloves company failed to convince the Federal Circuit to overturn a tribunal’s finding that green-colored gloves are generic and ineligible for a trademark.

Enough companies also sell chloroprene medical examination gloves in PT Medisafe Technologies Inc.'s shade of green that it’s too common to indicate a seller, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Tuesday in a precedential opinion. The court rejected Medisafe’s bid to limit the goods at issue to gloves “sold only to authorized resellers” and said the fact that gloves were also made in other colors didn’t undermine the genericness finding. ...