Ford asks U.S. trademark office to repeal GM’s trademark on ‘Journey’
The fight over “journey” just got uglier between two Detroit automakers.
Not exactly a month after General Motors sued Ford Motor Co. for trademark encroachment over the name of Ford’s new sans hands driving innovation called BlueCruise, Ford needs GM’s trademark rights to “Journey” and “Super Cruise” repealed, said Ford representative Mike Levine.
The journey is the name of GM’s auxiliary creating independent vehicles. Super Cruise is GM’s sans hands innovation.
On Friday evening, Ford was to record a solicitation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office requesting that it repeal both of GM’s “Journey” and “Super Cruise” trademark enrollments.
Levine said Ford contends the terms ought to have never been enrolled in any case, so it needs the trademarks revoked to guarantee “that it and the business overall can uninhibitedly utilize the word ‘voyage’ to securely depict their driver-help advancements.”
GM’s reaction to the recording was to emphasize quite a bit of what it said when it documented the claim.
“As the industry’s first true hands-free driver assistance system on the market, GM’s Super Cruise was first announced in 2012 and has had a well established commercial presence since 2017 with approximately 10M miles driven using the technology to date,” said Darryll Harrison, GM spokesman, in a statement. “GM remains committed to vigorously defending our brands and protecting the equity our products and technology have earned over several years in the market and that won’t change. At this time, we have no further comment.”
Ford keeps up with that GM’s trademark encroachment claim against it is “meritless and trivial,” Levine said, adding that the claim left Ford no other decision except to document the solicitation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
“Drivers for decades have understood what cruise control is, every automaker offers it, and ‘cruise’ is common shorthand for the capability,” Levine said. “Any number of companies use the word ‘cruise’ in connection with driver-assist technology.”
Portage picked BlueCruise comparable to the Blue Oval’s next development of Ford’s Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control, which consolidates without hands “Blue Zones” and other progressed voyage control highlights, he said.
GM documented the trademark encroachment claim against Ford on July 24 in U.S. Region Court in northern California in the wake of having half a month of intervened conversations with Ford attempting to agree on the utilization of “journey.”
GM’s greater part possessed self-driving auxiliary Cruise has been doing business since 2013.
GM is looking for financial harm and documented a primer directive asking that Ford be requested to quit utilizing the name.
Ford’s reaction to GM’s starter order late Friday contends “cruise” is a typical term utilized across the business, Levine said, noticing that GM generally approves of Predictive Cruise utilized by Mack Trucks, Robocruise utilized as RoboCars’ trademark, Hyundai’s Smart Cruise Control, and BMW’s Active Cruise Control.
