A pharmaceutical company has asked a US court to prevent Intel from suing it for a brand it claims for itself.
The case, filed on the 22nd of May at a Missouri district court by Express Scripts Inc, attempts to head off Intel at the gulch by saying it owns a brand called Intellact.
ESI says it is one of the biggest pharmacy benefit management companies in North America, and that is the owner of the trademark Intellact for a number of pharmaceutical and medican information services.
The firm says that the Intellact trademark is now being extensively branded in conjunction with its core business.
And, you’ve guessed it, ESI has had a letter from Intel lawyers on the 1st May 2009, claiming that the pharma company had breached the chip giant’s trademark.
ESI argues that “Intellact is a unique, fanciful, coined term created by ESI to be used on and in connection with its pharmacy benefit management related services”.
Intel, continues ESI, alleges it owns all right, title and interest in all marks that contain the root of the word “intelligent” as a component or part.
“Defendant Intel does not own the exclusive right to use the employ the term Intel as a component of any and all marks for any and all goods or services.”
The US Trademark office doesn’t agree, says ESI, and helpfully provides a long list of other companies starting with “Intel”.
Helpful, because Intel is terribly jealous of its trademark, and inside they get agitated when the term for intelligence is abbreviated in news reports to intel. How much more so when the trademarks start with Intel.
Intel will remorselessly send its teams of lawyers after any company or web site at all it feels like. I am the owner of a domain called intelligible.com. I have offered to sell it to them. They don’t seem that bothered.
