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MTM special ops watch" might be too confusing for consumers. consumers, because MTM watches are not sold on the site. Now, a similar lawsuit has been filed by Bodum against Williams-Sonoma for French Press coffee makers. These cases illustrate significant risks for e-commerce sites. Multi Time Machine's complaint was based on a few different search results pages on Amazon that involved keywords associated with Multi Time Machine's trademarks.
When searching for “mtm special ops watches” (and similar keyword searches that may be related to their brands), Amazon showed mostly related search results. As mentioned earlier, MTM watches are not sold on Amazon - but the jewelry retouching service site has linked these keyword searches to other watches that might be considered similar. Initial confusion of interest Multi Time Machine claimed that this caused the “initial confusion of interests” (IIC), which is a controversial theory in
trademark law. IIC is a legal premise with a fuzzy definition that allows a court to conclude that an infringement has occurred when there is initial confusion on the part of a consumer about the provenance of a product before it is ultimately purchased - even if this confusion no longer exists at the point of sale. Wikipedia provides the following hypothetical example: West Coast Video competitor Blockbuster Video places a billboard on a stretch of freeway advertising West Coast Video at an upcoming exit. In reality, there is no