Trademark law question about (type)

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wetshavingproducts

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While I'm fairly well versed in the law and IP, I am stumped as to how a fragrance can be marketed and sold with the exact same name as some trademarked fragrances, just by adding the word "type" to the end.

Is it simply because these are being sold under a different category (fragrance oil as opposed to perfume)? If so, that's kind of odd since they're both fragrances, one is just skin safe.
 
I have been long baffled by this. Most of the FO suppliers sell dupes under the actual name. NG is one of the few that uses a creative name change (but even some of those could be vulnerable to a copyright suit for similarity). Very suprising.....
 
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Yes, exactly. It's one thing to use the trademark as a "compare this product to...." but entirely different when you actually call it the same exact thing and add (type).
 
Im no expert on laws but I have read somwhere that perfumes cannot obtain a copyright. If that is the case I would "assume" that is how fragrance companys get awat with "dupes".

I think they take a scientific approach to breaking down the components of a fragrance to "derive" the dupe from..
I don't know maybe google copyright and trademark laws or rules for fragrance
 
I found this from the Scent Factory (http://thescentfactoryonline.com/faq)

Is it legal to duplicate a designer brand perfume?
Yes, it is perfectly legal to duplicate a designer fragrance just as long as the fragrance oils that are being sold have a disclaimer stating they are not the originals. That disclaimer is visible on the fragrance collection pages of this website. When a designer scent is created by the manufacturer, only the name and packaging are trademarks but not the scent. A Supreme Court ruled that perfumes can not be trademarked because the ingredients in them are derived from nature. Therefore, the ruling states you can not patent a scent of nature. Ex. apple, bergamot, vetiver, musk, iris, etc.


So if I'm reading this correctly you can use the trademark name only to say that it is not the original. I imagine you must use the trademark symbol after the name to denote that it is a trademark.
 
The scent itself is not patentable or copyrightable. However, it can be protected as a trade secret. It's basically a recipe.

The trademark is the brand. It cannot be copied by someone selling similar items. It can't be confusingly similar either.

There are unregistered and registered trademarks. Registered trademarks have more penalties available to the owner if infringement occurs.

That explanation out of the way, I'm talking about the trademarked brand. ie Acqua di Gio, Green Irish Tweed, Drakkar Noir, etc. Now, if those names have been used by other perfumers and are now ubiquitous, then the trademark protection disappears, but I highly doubt that is the case.
 
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