San Francisco, CA
San Francisco wants Oakland airport to stop using its new name now
OAKLAND, Calif. – San Francisco’s city attorney filed a preliminary injunction in federal court on Tuesday asking a judge to tell the Oakland airport to immediately stop using its new name, claiming it violates a trademark infringement.
The newly filed motion cites the presence of “actual confusion in the marketplace,” City Attorney David Chiu wrote.
He said that San Francisco conducted a survey which demonstrated “levels of confusion of over 20 percent.”
San Francisco’s injunction comes after The City sued Oakland in April.
That’s the same month the Port of Oakland renamed the Metropolitan Oakland International Airport to the San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport, in a highly controversial move.
As Chiu sees it, SFO began operating in 1927, and has used the name “San Francisco Airport” or “San Francisco International Airport” throughout most of its history.
Power of branding amid Oakland International Airport proposing a name change
The battle between Oakland and San Francisco is intensifying, now that the city has filed a lawsuit against “The Town,” over its proposal to add “San Francisco Bay” to the official name of Metropolitan Oakland International Airport. Katherine Melchior Ray, a marketing professor from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, joined us on ‘The Nine’ to talk about the impact of the proposed name change, and the power of branding.
San Francisco also has owned the U.S. federal trademark registrations for the marks “San Francisco International Airport” since 2012, Chiu said, with the first date of use in 1954, and the assigned airport code “SFO” together with SFO’s logo since 2007.
Port of Oakland attorney Mary Richardson reiterated much of what she said before, both verbally and in a counterclaim filed in May, that no one owns the name “San Francisco Bay Area.”
“The recent injunctive relief request by the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is a continuation of tactics rooted in publicity and anti-competitive bullying rather than on legal merits,” she said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it appears that SFO sought to manufacture confusion under the cloak of legal filings and try to erase OAK from the map.”
Richardson said that SFO’s lawsuit isn’t to prevent confusion, it’s “nothing more than an attempt to stifle competition and travel choices by Bay Area residents and position SFO as the only airport that serves the San Francisco Bay Area.”
And she vowed that Oakland will aggressively fight the battle in court.
Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson is expected to hear arguments on Oct. 24 at 10 a.m. in San Francisco.