[em-bee]

you can license others to use your trademark. so one of them could have trademarked it and licensed it to the other in an exclusive deal.

[hn_throwaway_99]

But that seems to be clearly not what happened in this case, at least by the explanations in the court's ruling.

[em-bee]

i didn't mean to imply that it did, just that the idea of sharing a trademark is not as ridiculous if you consider that licensing a trademark i possible and the result would mostly have been the same.