Christmas Patents And Non-Infringing Christmas Wishes

Since Christmas is a mere four days away, I wanted to discover a “new and useful” method (35 USC § 101) to relay my Christmas greetings in a novel (35 USC § 102) and non-obvious (35 USC § 103) manner. To make sure that my Christmas wishes did not infringe on any other wishes, I decided to conduct a quick patent search. To my chagrin, due to U.S. Patent No. D472,182, I cannot – without infringing – impart my birthday wishes upon Jesus. And my licensing negotiations having fallen through, I figured I would just wish “Merry Christmas To All.” I wanted to make sure, however, that I didn’t infringe on any third-party trademark rights. Quickly running a search on the USPTO database, I thought my Christmas wishes would once again be thwarted by trademark application number 74/455073 for the “Merry Christmas To All” trademark. But my worries quickly dissipated because the application has long been abandoned. Thus, hoping that Santa does not bring me a common-law trademark lawsuit, “Merry Christmas To All and To All A Goodnight.” Note to self: copyright clearance.