BATTLE OVER AIRPORT NAME
Experts weigh potential trademark suit over renaming of Oakland International.
Oakland International Airport sits on the San Francisco Bay, which its backers say entitles it to add that geographic title to its name. But across the bay, officials contend the move will confuse travelers and infringe on San Francisco International Airport’s trademark.
Who is right and more likely to prevail in a legal battle?
Several trademark experts who spoke to the Chronicle said both arguments surrounding the proposed “San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport” name have merit. One said San Francisco’s position is stronger, calling it a “pretty straightforward trademark infringement case.” Others said the dispute could ultimately be resolved through a compromise name, such as “Oakland San Francisco Bay International Airport,” similar to the result of several other intercity squabbles.
The Oakland Port Commission voted unanimously to rename the airport last week, despite the threat of a lawsuit from San Francisco.
Intellectual property specialist Lolita Darden said the two key questions raised in the dispute are whether or not the two businesses offer similar services under similar names that could confuse consumers, and whether “San Francisco Bay” should be seen as a geographic description in the new Oakland name.
When it comes to confusion, San Francisco has a strong case — the airports offer the same services and the two names are quite similar, said Darden, who is director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Clinic at George Washington University Law School and managing partner of Darden Betts Strategic Intellectual Property Counselors.
At the same time, Oakland’s argument that the “San Francisco Bay” should be fair game also has merit, Darden said. Trademark law generally prevents registering geographic descriptors because businesses ought to have the right to promote their location as part of their branding and marketing. So the suit would come down to a balancing test — the efficacy of “San Francisco Bay Oakland” as a description of the airport’s location compared to the likelihood of confusion caused by the similarity between the two names, she said.
Barton Beebe, a trademark expert at New York University’s School of Law, said that he felt like San Francisco officials would have a strong legal case against Oakland’s airport over the name change.
“This actually ends up being a pretty straightforward trademark infringement case,” he said, pointing to the trademark San Francisco city and county took out on the name San Francisco International Airport. The trademark application notes the name has been used at the airport since 1954.
While city and other geographic names face a higher threshold for trademark rulings than more unique or made-up names, Beebe said the similarities were too close between Oakland’s proposed name change and SFO.
“When a defendant in a case uses a mark that is so similar to SF’s mark, we would say that’s a pretty strong case of infringement,” he said.
Switching the name around to Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport might help Oakland’s case, Beebe said, but he wasn’t sure. Tyler Ochoa, who teaches trademark law at Santa Clara University, thinks putting Oakland first would weaken San Francisco’s dilution case by strengthening the descriptive quality of the proposed Oakland airport name. While San Francisco does have a strong case, it’s hampered by the fact that the “San Francisco International Airport” is not a particularly strong mark. “It isn’t very distinct,” he said. “It’s extremely descriptive.”
In San Francisco’s legal threat, City Attorney David Chiu wrote that the proposed name would lead to confusion. In trademark law, confusion means far more than a minor misunderstanding or inconvenience. If two businesses offer the same service with similar names, it devalues the better-known brand, Chiu argued.
For their part, East Bay proponents of the new name argue that the city does not have an exclusive right to “San Francisco Bay,” which describes both a geographic region and landmark.
Other airports have faced similar disputes.
In Florida, Orlando International Airport, the city’s biggest, has battled with two nearby airports that also used Orlando in their names for years. The region is a major tourist destination due to its proximity to Walt Disney World and other attractions.
Federal trademark officials have denied efforts by the city of Sanford to trademark the name of its facility as Orlando Sanford International Airport, and the city is appealing. Orlando officials have cited complaints from travelers who arrived at one airport, expecting to be at another.
In 2021, a smaller airport in Melbourne, Fla., which is about 70 miles outside of the Orlando city center, agreed to change its name from the Orlando Melbourne International Airport to Melbourne Orlando International Airport, after years of litigation. It had added Orlando to its name about six years before in a bid to attract more people.
Officials in Orlando said the name was “confusingly similar, false and misleading.”
“It was really about search engine optimization,” said Phil Brown, former CEO of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, of the disputes. “No one begrudged them for trying to generate additional traffic, but it was the manner and the way they approached it.”
Phil Roberts is a longtime airline consultant now based in the Bay Area who helped Baltimore’s airport market itself after renaming to Baltimore/Washington International in the 1970s. (It added “Thurgood Marshall” to its name in 2005.) The airport had previously been known as Baltimore Friendship International Airport.
Roberts said he doesn’t remember any controversy with other airports in the Washington area at the time. And he doesn’t think officials in San Francisco should be making a fuss over Oakland’s move.
“It makes no sense,” he said. “San Francisco airport is in San Mateo (County).” Depending on the time of day, getting from downtown San Francisco to the Oakland airport takes about the same amount of time as getting to SFO. “People are coming into Oakland to go to San Francisco.”
He added, however, that he thought Oakland San Francisco International Airport would be a good name, akin to Baltimore’s.