Some light reading......

My Competition Never Filed to Trademark Their Name So I Can Steal It, Right?

Keeping with the rule of “first use,” just because your competitor has yet to register its trademark with USPTO doesn’t give you legal grounds to appropriate it for yourself. While you can certainly pay to file an application on the trademark that your competitor uses, your application will be open to opposition at some point – and all your competitor has to do is prove first use of the trademark for your application to be denied.

In fact, this is exactly what happened to DuClaw Brewery when they tried to trademark the term “EUPHORIA”. After getting the trademark approved, they tried to enforce their rights against a competitor who also brewed a beer called Euphoria, only to find that the competitor had used the name first. Consequently, their trademark was cancelled. You can read more about it in the Research, or Lose Your Trademark section of our post on the story.

In general, it is not advisable to pursue any trademarks for which your competitor can invoke the rule of “first use”. In some rare cases, though, it is possible to obtain the trademark rights to your competitors’ intellectual property. Learn more about them in our post Legal Ways People Can Steal Your Intellectual Property.

from http://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/common-misconceptions-trademarking-name/