Pinterest Files A Trademark Suit Against Social Travel Startup Pintrips, Claims Pinning Buttons “Confusingly Similar”

Pinterest has made a point of discouraging the many social media companies that riff on Pinterest in their own brand names, with some of the more prominent of these going so far as to rebrand their services. And as for the rest? Get ready to go to court.

Today Pinterest filed a suit against Pintrips, a personal travel planning startup, accusing it of trademark infringement, false designation of origin, unfair competition and trademark dilution. “This action arises from Pintrips’ decision to adopt a social media brand that is confusingly similar to Pinterest’s, and its refusal to recognize, discuss or remediate the confusion it causes among consumers,” lawyers for Pinterest write in the complaint.

This comes in the same week that Pinterest won a $7.2 million case and an injunction against a cybersquatter called Qian Jin, who had registered more than 100 names that sounded a bit like Pinterest. (This is the same person who has also filed for trademarks that sound a lot like Quora.) And these are not the only trademark cases Pinterest is involved in: Path is going after Pinterest in a case over their similar-looking “P” logos.

We wrote about Pintrips back in April of this year, when it launched a “collaborative trip-planning dashboard for tracking flights and prices across destinations in real-time.”

The full suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is embedded below. From the looks of it, the complaint rests on a few key points.

First and foremost if you say both names out loud, they really do sound a lot alike, more than many of the brands (like Pinfluencer) that have opted to un-pin themselves entirely from the trademark.

There is also the issue that Pinterest has a lot of content on its social network that is related to travel. “Pinterest has made a particularly big splash when it comes to travel,” the complaint notes. “Pinterest users have posted more than 660 million PINS in Pinterest’s ‘Travel’ category to date. Many people use Pinterest as a travel-planning tool.” It goes on to note how many airlines and hotels, among others, use Pinterest as a marketing platform for their services. (A platform that, incidentally, is looking like it will soon start to generate money with the introduction of paid ads, another reason why sitting alongside a similar sounding service is not sitting right with Pinterest.)

And there is the issue of certain mechanics on the sites that are similar. Specifically, Pinterest believes that Pintrips’ “Pin” button is “confusingly similar” to Pinterest’s “Pin it” button. (They’re pictured up above) In some regards, this could be one of the most damaging aspects of Pintrips’ existence for Pinterest, since this is the button that it uses to disseminate its service all around the web and get people to keep using it from whatever other site they visit. Pintrips is very much a David to Pinterest’s Goliath in this story, but the worry is not only that it could grow, but if it’s allowed to flourish, what’s stopping others from following in that path? All of that spells brand dilution for Pinterest.

Pinterest is not commenting for this story. We are reaching out to Pintrips for a response.

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Pinterest Files A Trademark Suit Against Social Travel Startup Pintrips, Claims Pinning Buttons “Confusingly Similar”