Company will need to rebrand quickly.
It looks like Canvas.com is going to have to change its brand and domain name.
Instructure filed a lawsuit against the company claiming that its Canvas brand infringed on its trademark for Canvas and that it is cybersquatting by using the domain.
U.S. District Court judge Kimball Dale Kimball granted a preliminary junction on January 5 in favor of Instructure (NYSE: INST). He gave Canvas 15 days to cease using the brand, delete all online posts using the Canvas brand, and stop using the canvas.com domain name.
That deadline was January 20, but Canvas continued to use the brand and Canvas.com domain name.
Canvas appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. But today, that court denied (pdf) Canvas’ request to stay the District Court’s injunction.
The District Court judge last week threatened to find Canvas in contempt of court for continuing to use the brand. Kimball gave Canvas until today to explain why it hasn’t ceased using the brand.
With the appeal nixed, Canvas is up against a wall. In theory, Canvas could temporarily rebrand (as the District Judge suggested) and still fight the case. In practice, switching to a temporary brand and then rebranding back to Canvas would be nearly impossible.
The challenge for Canvas is that changing a domain name is hard, especially in short order. Judge Kimball only gave the company 15 days. It’s now been about 30 days, which is still a quick turnaround for a name change. That said, it seems like the best approach might be for Canvas to choose a new brand and try to negotiate with Instructure for a timeline to make the switch.
That’s kind of crazy.
Canvas*com I thought it was a mess the first time you reported on this story.
I wonder how quickly they could liquidate Canvas.com for cash and apply some of the funds to the re-brand?
And who would buy that hot popato? I wold suggest to get a better attorney. He could have done it differently from the beggining, canvas,com is different than canvas.
Any company not doing business in the same class as Instructure’s product or service would be fine using Canvas*com. It could be the name of a Web3 company, etc.
Canvas.com mistake was creating a re-brand around a ‘job board/recruiting’. That was the issue Instructure argued in Court
There are numerous trademarks for Canvas in the USPTO database. .
Many startups are looking for single word dot-com, like Canvas that don’t DESCRIBE their products. Also, Instructure raised $50M in Sept 2021.
They can afford a rebrand, and the selling of Canvas.com can defray some of the costs.
So, would any end-user company / entity be willing to buy Canvas*com at any price?
And what’s the value on the open market?
One miscarriage of justice indeed.
In my opinion, Kevin Albert, owner of Canvas,com and operating a a job recruiter, should have trademark(ed) the name canvas.com to operate as an online job recruiter. Instructure is a learning academy company which is way different, and can’t use Canvas (being a dictionary word) for everything and everywhere.
I personally have a couple of dictionary words and have faced UDRP for one of them and I won.
Knowing how hard is to fight against big corporations, I can only commnet from experience. Good luck with that challenge