Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Your chances of getting "Exercise Cards" through a trademark application for exercise cards are zero. The mark would be rejected as generic.

A trademark is the moniker the merchant uses to indicate him/herself as the source of the goods/services s/he sells in the stream of commerce. The trademark use takes that moniker out of the language; no one else can use it to describe those goods/services. No one but a particular corporation, for example, can call a pile of microchips, processors and busses an "Apple� computer." Notice that "Apple" modifies "computer"; trademarks are always adjectives. "Exercise cards" are just that; they are cards with exercises and workouts. You cannot take the name of the thing out of the language. Steve Jobs could not have named his invention "Computer� computer" and protected the mark.

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