Intellectual Property Law

Seattle Weather Calls to Mind the U.S. Postal Service's Registered Trademarks

By Michael Atkins

Its motto was tested yesterday.

Yes, Seattle’s famous for rain, but when we get snow, this hilly town shuts down.

True to its word, the post office nonetheless got the mail through. Mostly bills and junk mail, but I suppose it can’t be blamed for that.

This got me thinking about its famous slogan: “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Interestingly, the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum says this isn’t the Postal Service’s official motto after all. It says these words merely come from an inscription the architects engraved as a decorative flourish on the James A. Farley Post Office building they designed at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street in New York City. The words are attributed to Herodotus, who was describing (of course) not the U.S. postal system but that of 500 B.C. Persia.  

So if this isn’t the official U.S. Postal Service motto, why does the U.S. Postal Service own two registrations incorporating those words? Trademark Registration Nos. 2204875 and 2630271 are both design marks containing the words “RAIN SLEET SNOW.”

There notably are no other trademark registrations incorporating those famous words — except in their generic sense. The Pennzoil-Quaker State Company owns Reg. No. 3258361 for ULTIMATE VISIBILITY IN RAIN, SLEET AND SNOW! for “windshield wipers and blades thereof.”

The application to register NEITHER RAIN NOR SLEET NOR SNOW WILL KEEP ME FROM MY BINGO/KENO was abandoned, though the Las Vegas-based owner filed it five years before the U.S. Postal Services filed its applications.

Official or not, the U.S. Postal Service has a nice slogan going for it.

And if you ask me, it’s official. The Smithsonian is pretty darned authoritative, I’ll grant you that. But in my book, the Postal Service’s trademark registrations speak for themselves.

Full post as published by Seattle Trademark Lawyer on December 21, 2008 (boomark / email).