En route to Paris for the spring conference of the
Pharmaceutical Trade Marks Group, I am contemplating trying to pay
a visit to the PARIS BEACH CLUB. Paris Beach Club! Get
it? It's a joke because, as everyone of course knows,
Paris is land-locked and has no beach.
Or so goes the reasoning of one of my favorite Trademark Trial
& Appeal Board cases, In re Sharky's Dry Goods Co., 23
U.S.P.Q.2d 1061 (1992). This decision is a great find for
applicants seeking to register marks containing a geographic
reference to a place where their goods do not originate, provided
they coined their marks with a sense of humor.
Under Section 2(e)(3) of the Lanham Act, a mark
cannot be registered if it is primarily geographically deceptively
misdescriptive. A mark is considered geographically deceptively
misdescriptive if (1) the primary significance of the mark is a
generally known geographic location; (2) the consuming public is
likely to believe that the goods originate from the
