DON'T DOODLE

Yahoo! News reports that Pilot Pen Company has won a French trade mark infringement case against Mattel. Pilot makes the Magna Doodle sketching toy, and holds French and Community trade marks for MAGNA DOODLE. Mattel produced a sketching toy under the DOODLE-PRO trade mark, which was found by the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris to be confusingly similar to the MAGNA DOODLE mark. Mattel has said that it will appeal.

The IPKat says it’s rather difficult to reach a conclusion based on such scant information, but it is a little worrying that the only element the two marks appear to have in common is the descriptive/suggestive word ‘doodle’.