Unitek Solvent Services

Unitek Solvent Services (Unitek) is a Hawaii-based corporation that focuses on recycling, reclamation, and re-use of used oil. When Unitek began looking into ways to convert used oil into reusable fuel, its president decided on the term ECODIESEL to brand its processed diesel fuel. In late 2005, Unitek filed a federal trademark application for the... ECODIESEL mark. The application was registered on the Supplemental Register as U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,166,981 for "diesel fuel" and fuel for motor vehicles, namely diesel." By contrast with the Principal Register, the Supplemental Register offers lesser protections but also has lower standards for registrability, including permitting registration of merely descriptive marks. A mark that is merely descriptive of the goods or services it is being used to market or sell is not registrable on the Principal Register without demonstrating secondary meaning, i.e., that consumers have come to associate the mark with the source of the goods or services.Read More