Above the Law recently published a Techdirt story reporting that the USPTO denied Whole Foods‘ attempt to federally-register the laudatory trademark: “World’s Healthiest Grocery Store“.
The Techdirt story incorrectly seems to suggest that the global nature of the phrase is what caused the application to be refused, since Whole Foods has not yet achieved a truly global reach, according to a Washington Post article.
Truth be told, actually there is no connection between the extent of Whole Foods’ global reach and the USPTO’s decision to initially refuse registration, contrary to the Techdirt story.
In fact, the USPTO didn’t focus on whether the phrase is true, because it is laudatory and “merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s services,” such that the consuming public would view it as mere puffery, not susceptible to actual proof of its truth.
Had the USPTO thought the phrase was capable of proof and it disbelieved the claim, it would have sought to refuse registration under the deceptiveness registration bar of Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, but it didn’t.
In fact, the USPTO offered up to Whole Foods — once it puts in evidence of its use of the phrase as a trademark — an amendment from the Principal to the Supplemental Register, a more suitable address for non-deceptive marks capable of becoming distinctive in the future.
Of course, one of the principal benefits of a Supplemental Registration is that it prevents others from registering confusingly similar marks while the brand owner works to build and acquire the requisite distinctiveness needed for a Principal Registration.
In the end, it will be interesting to see how Whole Foods responds to the USPTO’s laudatory and descriptiveness registration refusal.
I’m thinking before it jumps at the USPTO’s Supplemental Register offer, it may try to argue against the descriptiveness refusal in the same way it successfully did for its federally-registered “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” trademark application, when back in 2010 it overcame a similar laudatory and merely descriptive registration refusal of the highly similar mark.
So, while it’s clear that the truth of the phrases comprising the those “healthiest” marks had nothing to do with the initial laudatory/merely descriptive registration refusals, what’s not clear to me is why the USPTO didn’t refuse registration based on a prior Supplemental Registration for “The World’s Healthiest Foods” mark — owned by these folks.