CNN
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The identify “San Francisco Bay Oakland Worldwide Airport” is off-limits to Oakland’s airport — no less than for now.
On Tuesday, US Justice of the Peace Decide Thomas S. Hixson blocked the Port of Oakland from utilizing the identify it just lately adopted for the Bay Space airport that was previously known as Metropolitan Oakland Worldwide Airport.
The decide granted the Metropolis of San Francisco’s movement for a preliminary injunction with respect to the Port of Oakland whereas the authorized battle performs out.
Referring to the trademarked identify, or “Mark,” for town’s main airport — San Francisco Worldwide Airport — the court docket order said that “San Francisco is more likely to prevail on its declare that the brand new identify of the Oakland airport makes use of San Francisco’s Mark in a means that falsely implies affiliation, connection and affiliation.”
In Might, Oakland’s airport changed its name to incorporate “San Francisco Bay,” regardless of a trademark lawsuit from neighboring San Francisco.
On the time, the Port of Oakland stated its purpose with the brand new identify was to extend site visitors “by boosting vacationers’ geographic consciousness of the airport’s location on the San Francisco Bay.”
It known as the renaming an vital a part of “broader efforts to strengthen and develop the airport as certainly one of Oakland’s vital financial engines.”
The airport saved its three-letter code, OAK.
The Metropolis of San Francisco filed a lawsuit on April 18 following the approval by Oakland’s Board of Port Commissioners to alter the airport’s identify. The federal go well with alleged that Oakland deliberate to “deliberately and knowingly capitalize off of confusion.”
In Might, a information launch from the Metropolis Legal professional of San Francisco stated the identify change would “very seemingly trigger widespread confusion, mishaps, and financial loss for vacationers, to the detriment of each airports and the Bay Space general.”
Tuesday’s court docket order stated San Francisco would seemingly prevail in claims associated to “affiliation, connection or affiliation confusion.” However it has not but proven that vacationers are seemingly to purchase tickets to the unsuitable airport.
CNN’s Taylor Romine and Chimaine Pouteau contributed to this report.