Michael J. Foycik Jr., Esq.

This is a determination of registrability of the mark “intelligent quartz” as applied to watches.  The TTAB (Trademark Trial and Appeal Board) applies a very fine distinction for a descriptiveness determination in this case, asking not whether anyone seeing the mark could guess the goods, but rather whether anyone knowing the goods would understand what the mark means when associated with those goods.

The evidence of usage of the terms “intelligent” and “quartz” together in this field was not overly strong.  The TTAB took a rather extreme view of the law regarding descriptiveness, saying that the question becomes whether the mark would “convey information about them [meaning the goods]” to one knowing the goods. 

It seems to this writer that, if this exact definition were applied in every instance, it would be very difficult to argue that any mark is suggestive rather than descriptive.  Indeed, many of the recent decisions seem to go the other way, that is, finding “suggestiveness” rather than descriptiveness”.  It is this writer's view that this decision could have gone either way on a different day.  For example, it would not be too hard to imagine the success of an argument that the viewer of the mark would need to make some creative step or take pause to consider the meaning of “intelligent quartz”.  It may be that this decision is related more to a bias against overuse of the word “intelligent” when describing computer-related products.