Shelter in place has delivered attention to meal delivery, prepared food delivery, contactless delivery, not to mention DIY food products, so this Kraft television commercial led me to explore if there may be a trademark story in this brand:
Upon first seeing the ad for Kraft’s Just Crack an EGG breakfast
Let’s all hope that the Supplemental Trademark Register is not on the death watch.
It appears though to be on life support, at times, and especially with the USPTO’s heightened focus on “merely informational” matter, including laudatory messages.
This is a common basis for registration refusal nowadays: “Merely informational matter fails to function as a
We’ve been down this road before, some themes intersect, and trademark value is filtered out:
The intersecting themes on tap for the day are: Zero, Branding, Trademarks, and Loss of Rights.
ZEROWATER is a perfectly suggestive, inherently distinctive, and federally-registered trademark with “incontestable” status as a source-identifier for “water filtering units
We’ve been writing about the COKE ZERO trademark for nearly a decade now, noting in 2014:
“[I]t will be worth watching to see whether the [TTAB] finds that ‘ZERO’ primarily means Coke or just a soft drink having ‘no calories, you know, a drink about nothing . . . .’”
Turns out, in May
– Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlash
No, I’m not talking about Dallas. Nor am I referring to the hip hop rap MC of the same name. I’m talking about Differentiation. If you understand this Big D, then you will have a real key to building your business.
Full disclosure: I consider myself a disciple of Al
– Draeke Weseman, Weseman Law Office, PLLC
When I think of Twitter, I think of — it’s really hard to define because we’re still coming up with the vocabulary — but I think it’s defined a new behavior that’s very different than what we’ve seen before.
— Jack Dorsey, Twitter Co-Founder in 2009
My, how
In the wake of all the discussion and debate over “trademark bullying,” NFIB (National Federation of Independent Businesses), the self-proclaimed Voice of Small Business, recently offered its members and followers “5 Steps to Avoid Corporate Trademark Bullying“:
Seth Godin’s recent post entitled Subtlety, deconstructed, struck a chord with me, and should strike a chord with all trademark types and the brand owners they represent. Here is my favorite excerpt:
Subtle design and messaging challenge the user to make her own connections instead of spelling out every detail. Connections we make are more powerful
–Sharon Armstrong, Attorney
I am currently in my home state of California, a place known to some as “the land of fruits and nuts.” (Although, “the Left Coast” is my favorite of these playfully derisive names for California.)
California is indeed the fruit basket of the United States, producing 51% of the nation’s fruit.
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Here is a brand baiting gem spotted yesterday at a website called Daily Checkout:
Unremarkable? A deal, you say? Well, the following disclaimer appears twice in the sidebar adjacent to this deal:
And here is another feature pulled from the sidebar:
Greeaat . . . an MP3 player that won’t work