Oakland Airport Fights to Keep ‘San Francisco Bay’ in Its Name

Neighboring cities with airports along the San Francisco Bay will face off in federal court Thursday over whether the name “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport” violates San Francisco’s trademark.

The City of San Francisco’s seeking a preliminary injunction banning Oakland and its port from using its new moniker for its airport. San Francisco cites social media posts in court filings to argue travelers are already confused about where they’re flying since Oakland changed its airport’s name in May.

Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson, in San Francisco, must decide whether enough consumers could be confused between the two airport names—San Francisco International Airport and San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport—to grant a temporary injunction. Oakland changed the airport’s name in hopes of attracting more nonstop flights by promoting its proximity to the San Francisco Bay, the Oakland Port Commission said on May 9 after voting to rename the airport.

San Francisco’s likelihood of winning an injunction will rest on Hixson’s assessment of the city’s trademark infringement claims. Those claims could fail even if there’s some chance of consumer confusion because federal law isn’t designed to protect against minimal confusion, said Debevoise & Plimpton LLP partner David Bernstein.

“There’s probably some numbskulls out there who will be confused, but trademark law is not designed to protect numbskulls,” he said. “It’s designed to protect reasonable consumers who know that there’s multiple airports serving a city, and they have to make sure they know which airport they’re going to.”

Even sophisticated consumers might be misled, especially when airport names are truncated on mobile devices, said Haynes & Boone LLP partner Kenneth Parker. If a judge can imagine themselves buying tickets to the wrong airport, he said, they might be more receptive to San Francisco’s arguments.

However the court decides, the injunction decision is likely to determine the outcome of the lawsuit. “If you lose the preliminary injunction, that’s something that’s very hard to ever recover from,” Bernstein said.

Battle of the Bay Airports

San Francisco sued Oakland and its port—which runs Oakland’s airport—in April, days after the Oakland Board of Port Commissioners granted preliminary approval to change the name.

The US District Court for the Northern District of California in June stayed the case for three months amid settlement talks. But the cities failed to resolve the dispute by September, when San Francisco moved for a preliminary injunction.

San Francisco logged 15 incidents of individuals showing up at SFO for Oakland flights between June and August, the motion said.

“We believe that there are plenty more folks who have been confused that we weren’t able to document,” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in an interview with Bloomberg Law.

To win a temporary ban, San Francisco must demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits and that it’ll suffer irreparable harm outweighing potential harm to Oakland.

Laura Franco, a Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC partner, said the marks are “really similar” and San Francisco’s evidence of confusion is compelling. “I’m a traveler and I find this disturbing,” she said, noting how the marks overlap in the services provided, target consumers, and channels of marketing.

Oakland argues the new name doesn’t infringe the SFO trademark because “San Francisco Bay” falls under the doctrine of descriptive fair use—when using the trademark doesn’t indicate the source of the connected goods or services—because it describes the Oakland airport’s physical location.

“When you pick a name as descriptive as San Francisco International Airport, you kind of have to suffer the consequences of other people also describing their airport as serving the San Francisco market,” said Bernstein, who cited other cities that operate with multiple airports like Washington D.C., New York City, and Chicago.

Chiu said he used to live in DC and that “everybody knows the difference” between the region’s three airports because their names are distinct, but that’s not the case in the Bay Area.

“It’s a brand we are proud of, and it’s a valuable brand that we must protect, and the brand that legally belongs to San Francisco does not belong to Oakland,” Chiu said.

Franco said San Francisco is entitled to protect its recognizeable “San Francisco International Airport” trademark.

“It’s true that San Francisco is a geographic indicator, but when you pair it with ‘International Airport’ in a phrase, you know, it doesn’t help much for Oakland to stick a couple of names in the middle of it,” Parker said.

Tyler Ochoa, a Santa Clara Law professor, said Oakland’s proximity-based rebranding is because “Americans are sort of famously geographically illiterate” and don’t realize OAK is closer to downtown San Francisco than SFO.

In 2019, Oakland commissioned a commercial entitled ‘Inferiority Complex’ featuring actors as San Francisco residents frustrated over Oakland airport’s convenience. The ad was cited in San Francisco’s injunction motion as part of “Oakland’s fixation on and negativity toward SFO.”

Hurdles for San Francisco

The city faces at least a pair of obstacles.

San Francisco waited months to file a motion for a preliminary injunction in September, after filing the lawsuit in April.

“The whole point of a preliminary injunction is that you’re suffering irreparable harm that can’t wait until the lawsuit is finished,” Ochoa said.

There’s also an existing Oakland trademark covering “the best way to San Francisco Bay.” San Francisco didn’t complain about that mark, said Bernstein.

The cities may ultimately follow the example set by a dispute between Memphis International Airport and Memphis-Millington Airport in 2017 when the latter agreed to change its name to Millington-Memphis Airport, said Britt Anderson, a partner at Perkins Coie LLP.

Impending holiday traffic could increase the pressure for a resolution and swing the judge in San Francisco’s favor, said Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP partner Anthony Malutta.

If the court doesn’t make a decision before the holidays, Franco said, “San Francisco is likely to have compelling additional evidence of actual confusion come January.”

The case is City & Cnty. of San Francisco v. City of Oakland, N.D. Cal., No. 24-cv-02311, preliminary injunction hearing 11/7/24.