Social media giant Pinterest Inc. and travel startup site Pintrips Inc. are currently battling it out in court over their similar sounding names and the trademark rights to the term “pin.”
Pinterest was well established, with over 17 million active users each month, when the travel website Flightrax changed its name to Pintrips. Pinterest’s lawyers accuse Pintrips of intentionally choosing a name that is “deceptively close” to Pinterest.
Pintrips operates similarly to Pinterest, in that users can “pin,” or save, flight information from multiple sites. Pinterest claims that they were the first to use the word “pin” in relation to bookmarking digital content. Pintrips has filed a counterclaim requesting that Pinterest’s trademarks be canceled as generic. Pintrips’ attorney argued that people have commonly used terms like “pin” and “pinning” when talking about saving online content long before Pinterest came to be. He likened the terms “pin” and “pinning” to commonly used digital terms like “trash,” “folder,” and “mail.”
Pinterest is not seeking damages; they simply want Pintrips to change their name. “It is not an undue burden to ask Pintrips to rebrand,” said Pinterest’s lawyer. Throughout the trial so far, Pinterest’s lawyer asked that the court forgive her as she switched back and forth between saying the two company names, as they sound so alike when said quickly. Pintrips’ attorney, however, was much more deliberate in the pronunciation of the two companies, clearly enunciating “Pin-TUR-est” to easily distinguish the two names.
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