Perhaps if the SFAR imitated the trade dress of the SCAR they’d have a case. But IMO firearms naming conventions are too similar to make these kinds of arguments.
You can play this game for years. Is the ACR going to create market confusion with the SCAR? What about of the number of ‘not ar-15’ names do those impinge on Colt’s trademark?
That’s what I was thinking but forgot to add in another comment. If it was the name in addition to the rifle physically resembling a SCAR, I could see an actual case where FN wins.
As it is, my understanding is that trademarks are required to be vigorously protected (as opposed to copywrite, where the holder can suffer no penalty for not caring about some knockoffs while suing others) so it may be a case of FN pursuing the lawsuit while knowing it will lose. The goal being to establish a record of vigorous protection so that when they sue the maker of the hypothetical “S-CAR” the courts have no question about their protectiveness of trademark. But that’s my non-law understanding from watching YouTube lawyers.
Lawsy! We got some industry drama!
Jokes aside, I have a feeling this won’t go anywhere
I dunno, both designations do use letters in them.
FN accuses Ruger of using a mark – “SFAR” – that is pronounced similarly to “SCAR” and used in connection with directly competing firearms. FN alleges that this action by Ruger is likely to cause confusion among consumers, leading them to believe there is some affiliation or association between Ruger’s products and FN’s “SCAR” branded firearms
Eh, I see their point and look forward to a non disclosed settlement agreement
I think it’s pretty thin personally. I don’t know how they claim the two are pronounced “similarly”, as it seems intuitive most people would pronounce SFAR as “S-far” or “S-F-A-R”.
The kicker is the SFAR is a pretty routine AR-15 derivative compared to the more unique SCAR. I think it’s a hard sell to tell a court customers would be deceived into mixing the two up.
Thanks for confirming you’re too dumb to discern between a c and an f
