Six months after Pintrips launched its travel planning site, Pinterest filed a complaint against it in the District Court of California. The complaint is regarding the use of the trademark protected "Pin" portion of the Pinterest brand name.

Issues Raised By Pinterest
The complaint alleges that plaintiff Pinterest registered its trademark ahead of defendant Pintrips, a brand name that is confusingly similar to its own. It further alleges that it has not consented to Pintrip's use of its name and its widely popular feature of pinning. The defendant is making it appear that they are associated with the plaintiff, and profiting from the goodwill that it has created in the cyberworld. Pinterest is one of the leading social media bookmarking sites. Therefore, Pintrips hopes to rake in the profits by riding its famous coattails.

The Defense
Pintrips has not made any statements on the issue or the case. However, the complaint alleges that plaintiff has made efforts to dissuade defendant from infringing on its name before the complaint was filed, but defendant refused to listen. The names of the parties do sound the same when said out loud. In addition, Pinterest has established rules against the use of like sounding names in its site, and therefore, infringers have been duly warned. In fairness, the service offered by the defendant is not something that the plaintiff is currently doing.

Pinterest has been very active in protecting its brand name. This case comes right after winning an injunction suit against Qian Jin who bought domain names which were similar to Pinterest. Pintrips was sufficiently warned not to usurp the name. It could have chosen many other names that would have better represented its service. It also made use of the button that has been associated with Pinterest. On the other hand, the services are not totally the same. It is now up to the court to decide whether Pintrip is infringing on Pinterest's trademark.