People, the government, and corporations can be sued for money or enjoined (told to stop) when, without permission, they use someone else's trademark in business in a way that is likely to cause consumer confusion, consumer mistake, or deceive consumers. The person using the trademark without permission is an infringer and the person who owns the mark is an owner. The statutory limitations on who can be sued, and what they can be sued for, are covered in section 114 of title 15 of the U.S.C., they are:
- The infringer must knowingly use the other person's trademark for the owner to recover money.
- When the infringer is only printing the mark and they show that they are an "innocent infringer", the owner can only sue to stop the infringer from printing the mark in the future.
- There is no injunction for periodicals (newspapers, magazines, ezine) where stopping the printing would delay printing of the whole periodical. This only applies to periodicals that have adopted an industry wide practice for printing and not some strange scheme they devised to allow them to take advantage of this limitation.
- A domain name registrar can only be sued to stop their business of registering domain names when:
- they have not quickly given the court enough information for the court to establish that it has jurisdiction over the case;
- changed the domain name registration during the case without the court's authorization;
- or willfully failed to do something the court told the registrar to do.
- A domain name registrar that does something in compliance with a court order or as part of a reasonable policy to prevent trademark infringement, can not be sued unless they do something from the list of things mentioned in the previous bullet point.
- A domain name registrar can only be sued for registering or maintaining a domain name if there was a bad faith intent to profit from the registration or maintenance of the domain name.
- If a domain name registrar is sued because of what they did to someone's domain name based on a material misrepresentation from another person that the domain name was infringing a trademark, then the person who made the material misrepresentation pays for any amount the registrar is sued for and the registrar's costs of defending the suit.
- If a domain name owner's domain name is suspended, disabled, or transferred because of the domain name registrar's reasonable policy to avoid trademark infringement; then the domain name owner can sue to have the domain name reactivated or transfered back to them.
- Manufacturers or licensees/licensors of technology that makes part of a video imperceptible are not liable for trademark infringement as long as they make sure that the technology "provides a clear and conspicuous notice at the beginning of each performance" that says that the video is altered from the performance intended by the director or copyright holder of the video.
- The requirement that the technology provide clear and conspicuous notice of the alteration only applies to technology manufactured after October 24, 2005.
- This is just a safe harbor provision. If the manufacturer doesn't comply with it, it doesn't mean that manufacturer is guilty of trademark infringement. The manufacturer just can't use this clause as a defense.
- If a member of a private household makes a part of a video (that was authorized to be performed in, or transmitted, to their house) imperceptible so that they can view it later in their private home; then there is no trademark infringement. As long as their is no fixed copy of the altered version of the video.
- If a person makes software that does what is described in the previous bullet, and the software is designed to be used at the direction of a member of a private household, then there is no trademark infringement.
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