Trademarks

In the case of a survey as to confusion, the question whether the survey was likely to be of real value might readily be answered in the negative in a case where the goods or services in question were ordinary consumer goods or services and the judge felt that there would be no real difficulty in the court determining the issue of confusion without a survey. Conversely, in the case of a survey as to acquired distinctiveness, the court might feel that it was not able to determine such a dispute based on its own experience and/or the court might feel the need to guard against an idiosyncratic decision. A further possible distinction between a confusion survey and a distinctiveness survey was that the former might involve a prediction as to the likelihood of something happening whereas a distinctiveness survey addressed the issue of whether something had happened. Further, whether the survey in question related to distinctiveness or confusion,