Blinded Veterans Association v. Blinded American Veterans Foundation
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
872 F.2d 1035 (1989)
The Blinded Veterans Association (plaintiff), a charity founded in 1945 to help blinded WWII veterans, sued former officers who founded the similarly named Blinded American Veterans Foundation (defendant) in 1985, seeking to stop the foundation from using the words "blinded" and "veterans" and the acronym "BVA." The district court sided with the Association and enjoined the foundation from using the acronym "BAVF," and the foundation appealed.
Whether a competitor's later use of a similar commercial name can support an unfair-competition claim, even if the name is generic, when the competitor fails to adequately distinguish its own product from the first user's.