Ford Pickup and Ferrari Racer Go Head to Head in Court

A Ford pickup truck (left) and a Formula One Ferrari (right)

/ CBS

What's in a name?

For cars, quite a lot -- even for two cars as different as a full-size Ford pickup and a Formula One Ferrari. The Ford F-150, a quintessential American truck, and the Ferrari F150, a 785-horsepower Italian race car, couldn't be more different, but save for a hyphen, their names are identical.

The two vehicles will never be confused with each other on the road, but the American automaker doesn't much care for the European sports car company appropriating the name of the top-selling pickup for its single-seat supercar, even if Ferrari says it chose the name in honor of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification.

Today, Ford filed a lawsuit against Ferrari in federal court for trademark infringement. And the F-150, which could never hope of besting the F150 on the raceway, now has a darn good chance of doing it in court.

Carter Yang is a Washington, D.C.-based producer for the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric." He covers aviation, transportation, and homeland security.

[enlightenu]

This is one of the dumbest lawsuits I ever heard of. Ford was just starting to look intelligent with some pretty good new models but now they've gone and associated their name with foolishness again.