Federal Judge James S. Moody Jr. Friday afternoon ruled against the St. Petersburg Times’ tbt* in a copyright lawsuit brought by the Tampa Tribune. Moody said the Tribune would likely prevail in its allegations that the Times plans to rebrand tbt* to Tampa Bay Times would cause reader confusion and infringe upon a trademark held by the Tribune (for its now-defunct afternoon paper, Tampa Times). Moody wrote in a preliminary injunction barring tbt* from bumping up Tampa Bay Times in its title, “In reviewing the marks at issue in this matter, The Tampa Times versus tbt* Tampa Bay Times, this Court finds that the mere inclusion of the regional descriptive word “Bay” is insufficient to distinguish the mark of Plaintiffs from that of Defendant as to eliminate the likelihood of confusion. This is particularly so since Defendant is changing its product from a weekly entertainment guide to a general news format published five days per week, while at the same time changing the masthead emphasis from the letters “tbt” to the words “Tampa Bay Times”. As such, there is a substantial likelihood that Plaintiffs will prevail on the merits … .”

3-9 UPDATE: If you follow the comments on this post, you already know some of the dispute over which daily newspaper’s take on this decision was accurate. I’m working to see if we can put a copy of the order online (it is only available from the federal court’s PACER system, which costs money) so you can decide yourself. But in the meantime, let me point to the Times’ own Eric Deggans’ take on this, here under the headline ” First Skirmish to the Tribune, But Who Wins the War?”

This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.