Trademark Continues Its March Across the Globe, Raising Eyebrows
By SHARON LaFRANIERE and DANNY HAKIMAPRIL 11, 2017
... A six-month-old request to register his brand of sheets, duvets, towels and other goods, now selling briskly at a home goods store in Lima, overcame a crucial hurdle in late December. So did a second application to protect Mr. Trump’s brand of flatware that was filed after the election ...
... to a team of constitutional lawyers and ethics lawyers, the pending Peruvian petitions are emblematic of the legal and moral perils in Mr. Trump’s continued ownership of his business empire. In a federal lawsuit that has set up a high-stakes legal battle with the Trump administration, they argue that the Constitution prohibits the president from accepting any economic benefit, including trademark approvals, from foreign governments.
A review of 10 trademark databases shows that Mr. Trump’s enterprise, now run by his two adult sons, has 157 trademark applications pending in 36 countries. Registered trademarks are valuable financial assets, especially for a business like Mr. Trump’s, which is increasingly focused on marketing his name, not building hotels ...
The legal question is whether new foreign trademark registrations and other transactions between Mr. Trump’s businesses and foreign governments violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution. The clause prohibits federal officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state” ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/us/politics/trump-trademark-ethics.html?_r=0
