If you use a phrase to describe your product, it probably isn’t a trademark. %CUT% Simone Kelly-Brown registered the phrase “Own Your Power” in a special form (see the first picture). When Oprah Winfrey’s “O” Magazine used the same phrase on its cover (second picture), Kelly-Brown sued for trademark infringement. The case took a tortured path up and down from trial court to appellate court to trial court and back to appellate court. In the end, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for Oprah and her publisher. The Court held that Kelly-Brown’s use of the phrase was merely descriptive of her products and services. Oprah demonstrated that the phrase had been in use since at least 1981. Oprah, herself, used the phrase in a 1993 commencement address which predated Kelly-Brown’s use of the phrase. Kelly-Brown tried to argue that the mark had acquired secondary meaning because the consuming public had come to identify the mark with her goods and services. But, the trial court held that Kelly-Brown didn’t have enough proof to support her position.