What a Crock, Pot That Is . . .

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Steve Baird

We're not talking the foamed footwear Crocs® that Randall Hull wrote about in his What a Croc! post from a couple of weeks ago. Instead, we're talking slow cookers -- on this snow-capped Valentine's Day in the Twin Cities.

Every once in a while a stroll down the grocery store aisle leaves me surprised when I spot a federal registration symbol next to a word that I thought was a generic term for the goods or services in question. Today was such a day, when I noticed Sunbeam's Crock-Pot® The Original Slow Cooker appliance on the store shelf. Apparently I'm not alone in my surprise at the trademark status, given Wikipedia's acknowledgment that Crock-Pot is a trademark "often used generically in the USA" -- and Slo-Cooker is a trademark "often used generically in the UK."

It appears the Crock-Pot® trademark was originally registered back in 1972, and a couple of years ago federally-registered protection for the trademark was extended into a number of different classes of goods at the U.S. Trademark Office for a variety of different products, including food, and some cooking accessories. Last June, this logo was federally registered by Sunbeam, but it specifically disclaimed any exclusive rights in the descriptive phrase "The Original Slow Cooker":

I'm left wondering whether this is like the Rollerblade example, where it took the owner of the Rollerblade brand an entire decade to battle genericide by developing a commercially acceptable generic term (in-line skates) to couple with the brand.

Here are a few questions for marketing types to ponder and discuss: If you're Sunbeam, owner of the federally-registered Crock-Pot® trademark, do you care if retailers and your direct competitors call their competing products a Crock-Pot too? What about Search Engines selling Crock-Pot as a keyword, do you care about that? If so, how much do you care? Is it important enough to spend dollars on stopping these kinds of actions?

Just so no one is left out, here, for you trademark types out there, what steps would you take to avoid having the Crock-Pot® trademark invalidated on genericness grounds?

Same drill for the Bundt® trademark that Dan wrote about prior to the holidays.

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Happy Holiday Before the Holidays

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Dan Kelly

As we hit the ides of November, we are nearing the proverbial calm before the storm of the holidays. What you probably do not know is that we are but two, short days away from a little-known holiday before the Holidays, one that celebrates the preparation for the Holidays. This, of course, could only be National Bundt Day.

The first National Bundt Day was declared in 2006, the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the company that is the source of the Bundt® pan: Nordic Ware. This family-owned company, legally incorporated as Northland Aluminum Products, Inc., is located on the outskirts of our own Minneapolis, Minnesota, and specializes in aluminum and other cookware. Nordic Ware has sold more than 60 million Bundt® pans, estimated to be enough to be in two out of three U.S. households. According to Nordic Ware, the word BUNDT, a coined term and registered trademark for cake pans, is derived from the German word “bund,” which means “a gathering of people.” Adding to the uniqueness of Nordic Ware, the company still manufactures in the United States (in Minneapolis), and openly states, "in the marketplace struggle between price and quality, quality wins every time."  Amen. 

Although Nordic Ware makes Bundt® pans in numerous shapes and sizes, and has even registered the shape of one of its unique pans as a trademark, it doesn’t appear that Nordic Ware has sought to register its “original” shape Bundt® pan as a trademark, but it probably could:

Indeed, the Bundt is iconic and enjoyed by peoples of all cultures and ethnicities.

For a brief third-party history of the Bundt® pan and a review of Bundt buying and baking, click here.

Happy baking!

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