CHICAGO, Nov. 20 /PRNewswire/ — After a three week jury trial, the U.S. District Court in Minnesota has decided in favor of TransUnion and VantageScore®, denying the purported common law and registered trademark rights FICO claimed were violated. The jury found that FICO knowingly made a false representation to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in connection with its registration of the 300-850 trademark. The jury’s verdict invalidates that trademark.
The verdict clears the way for TransUnion’s business customers and consumers to choose the scoring solution that best meets their needs. At issue in the case was the use by credit score developers of numbers that encompass or overlap the 300-850 score range currently used by FICO, and whether consumer or lender confusion resulted from that use. FICO claimed a common law trademark in the range which it registered with the U.S. government in 2006, TransUnion has used the 300-850 range for a proprietary credit scoring model it first made available to the consumer market in 2003, a date that precedes FICO’s original 2004 trademark application.
Joachim C Bartels is a co-founder and director for these positions
Bartels was BIIA’s general manager and Editor-in-Chief from 2005 to 2022. Semi-retired, he continued as Editor-in Chief and Head of Information Resources (Website and Newsletter) and retired from these positions in September 2024.
Bartels is a business information development specialist with over 50 years of global experience. He spent most of his information career in senior management positions at Dun & Bradstreet. He has served as volunteer in major industry associations in Europe and the USA. Joachim C. Bartels owns Intrepid Explorers, Inc. a business information consultancy.
The BIIA website is a treasure trove of knowledge approaching 16,000 documents of industry announcements, use cases, benchmarks and best demonstrated practices. BIIA members receive regular news alerts on key developments in the industry and the regulatory environment. The BIIA readership is widespread: between 4 to 5 thousand unique visitors access BIIA.com per month.
