SuperStroke Grip Design; Is it Worthy of Trademark Registration?
This week the company associated with the popular SuperStroke grips, namely Technique Golf, L.L.C., filed a trademark application seeking registration of a trademark that consists of the shape of a golf club grip.
The application includes the following drawing of the grip shape that they are trying to register.
Other grip manufacturers should take notice.
Unfortunately for Technique Golf, my gut tells me that they have roughly a zero percent chance of registering this product design as a trademark via this application. Things may have been different had they gone the route of asserting that the product design had acquired distinctiveness and submitted boatloads of evidence supporting a §2(f) claim, while organizing the evidence to demonstrate that the design is not simply functional (as was this case of a PING putter design) and preempt a Section 2(e)(5) refusal, and distinguishing the product design mark from the functionality discussed in their patents (6,626,768 and 6,988,958).
When will people learn, product design trademark registration involves a lot more than what is required to register the name of a new product. Some day I will create a post regarding the few golf products that have successfully obtained trademark registration on the product designs, some of which are more distinctive than the SuperStroke grip design, and some less distinctive. I give them credit for at least trying to protect their IP in every way possible, I just think they went about it the wrong way. Oh well, live and learn.