Filipino Yellow Pages, Inc. v. Asian Journal Publications, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
198 F.3d 1143 (1999)
Filipino Yellow Pages, Inc. (FYP) (plaintiff) published a directory under that name and sued a competitor, Asian Journal Publications (AJP) (defendant), for trademark infringement after AJP occasionally advertised its own directory as the Filipino Consumer Yellow Pages. AJP moved for summary judgment, arguing Filipino Yellow Pages was a generic term ineligible for trademark protection. The district court agreed and granted summary judgment for AJP; FYP appealed.
Whether a trademark made up of a combination of generic terms may be protectable as a descriptive mark, where the combination as a whole overcomes the genericness of its individual parts to identify the producer rather than the product.