Thrifty Rent-a-Car System v. Thrift Cars, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
831 F.2d 1177 (1987)
Thrifty Rent-a-Car (plaintiff), which obtained federal trademark registration for its name in 1964 and grew into a major national car-rental chain with numerous Massachusetts locations, sued local competitor Thrift Cars (defendant), which had operated exclusively in East Taunton, Massachusetts since 1962 (with only sporadic rentals elsewhere in the Commonwealth) and continued maintaining its East Taunton address, phone number, and local advertising even after expanding to Nantucket in 1970; the parties stipulated their names were confusingly similar, and the district court crafted a geographically split injunction allowing Thrift to continue operating and advertising within East Taunton while barring Thrifty from operating or advertising there, with both parties appealing.
Whether a junior trademark user has a right to continued use of an otherwise infringing mark in a remote geographical location if the use was established prior to the senior user's federal registration of the mark.