Time to brush up on your trademark law.

We turn now to the dog-eat-dog world of toothpaste packaging, where a word we've never heard of is at the center of a heated dispute between the Colgate-Palmolive Company and GlaxoSmithKline.

The loaded word? Nurdle, or, for the uninitiated, "a small amount of toothpaste akin to what consumers would use brushing their teeth."

Colgate-Palmolive filed a suit in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday in defense of its right to use a nurdle on its packaging along with the phrase, Triple Action, which, as everybody knows, refers to "Cavity protection," "Whiter teeth," and "Fresh breath." Click herefor the complaint.

"If any oral care product manufacturer were to be prohibited from using nurdle images on product packaging, that manufacturer would be at a competitive disadvantage," warns Colgate in court papers.