General Motors has filed an application to register the term “Black Out” as a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), GM Authority was first to discover.
The automaker’s March 12th, 2015 application carries serial number 86561933 and specifies that the mark will be used for “Motor land vehicles, namely, trucks.”
The GM Authority Take
Back in 2014, Chevy showed off the (sweet-looking) Impala Blackout Concept at the 2014 SEMA show that featured — you guessed it — black exterior and interior elements. GM has yet to offer the blacked-out look on a production Impala, so we’ll go ahead and venture a guess that the trademark filing in question is destined for an Impala Black Out variant. That said, we’d love to see Chevy (and even Cadillac) give the blackout treatment to its entire model range, including trucks, SUVs, cars, and crossovers.
Comments
lets hope that it isn’t for an electric car!
Come on Chevy. Why no Impala SS with the turbo engine and AWD from the Cadillac XTS-V. It will cure the slow sales from the SS, and the void when you stop selling it.
Give the Impala the goods from the XTS VSport. Yes! That would be great, and make for a great Taurus SHO rival.
They do this quite often, just to protect the rights to concept names etc. That said, it would be neat to see them actually build one of these concept/show cars for a change. Also to do it completely as shown and not watered down.
“They do this quite often, just to protect the rights to concept names etc.”
No, they do not.
Protecting rights to names is simply not how the trademark system/process in the U.S. works. Check out the GM Authority take in this article, as it illustrates why:
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2015/03/buick-gmc-vp-duncan-aldred-mum-on-plans-for-badlands-trademark/
Here in Puerto Rico, a “blackout” is a glass of Coca-Cola with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it. No trademark needed!
Boricua.