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abroad. Respondent’s expert, as a trial lawyer, advanced a more
practical formulation, reflecting what would have resulted if the
parties’ agreements and actions were contested and subjected to
litigation.
The informality and lack of precise language used by DHL and
DHLI would have caused more problems in transactions between
unrelated third parties seeking to enforce their rights to the
DHL trademark. But here we have corporate entities with
interlocking shareholder control and a common purpose of
establishing and maintaining a worldwide delivery network under
the name “DHL”. DHL’s and DHLI’s respective rights and
obligations concerning the trademark are sufficiently defined to
be enforceable. Both parties agree that DHL’s ownership of the
trademark in the United States is without question.
DHL’s lack of involvement in the foreign registrations and
the lack of precise and more formal agreements and standards,
however, lessens the quality of DHL’s ownership rights and
interests in the registration and rights to the DHL trademark
outside the United States. Because DHL had the ability to
terminate and/or cause DHLI’s inability to use the trademark for
a 5-year period, the import of DHLI’s foreign registrations is
mitigated. Finally, in the factual context of these cases,
common shareholders controlled DHL and DHLI, and the foreign
investors had the option to acquire a collective majority
interest in DHLI/MNV and the DHL trademark worldwide. Although
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