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
What do you think of when you hear the word Velveeta? Me too, childhood — complete with piping hot Campbell’s tomato soup — and perfectly melted grilled cheese sandwiches. Later in life, at least for me, came liquid gold and RO*TEL queso dip, usually on weekend game days. And, my daughter might add to
Word to the wise, not the best idea to name a product or service by using another’s brand.
So, when Duke’s Seafood & Rib Shack restaurant wants to create a name for their bar, permission would be required to use the Corona brand — there is no applicable trademark fair use defense merely because they
Last year at FUSE 2014, I spoke about “The Intersection of Brands, Design, and the Law,” this year — and a short ten days from now — I’ll be sharing some valuable thoughts about how to gracefully navigate the many legal pitfalls of naming and re-branding projects.
FUSE — one of the premier brand
Good homemade mac-n-cheese dishes are a real weakness for me, so this past weekend I couldn’t resist capturing this image from a local restaurant menu:
Although our daughter wasn’t with us for this particular experience, I couldn’t help being amused by the “not kraft mac n cheese” menu item, as she has been probing a
Brace yourselves everybody, I have some bad news: Hamburger Helper is no more. But wait! Don’t jump yet, friend. Thanks to the General Mills marketing department, and fueled by a loss of market share to new competition from Kraft, Hamburger Helper has been reborn. Let me introduce to the new and improved brand: Helper.
—Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlashSM Name Development
Naming contests. Sounds like a good idea, right? A company needs a new name and it decides to engage its employees to come up with a new name. What could go wrong?
Well, you could end up with a name like Mondelez.
Just to be clear, I’m
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Today, another chapter of AlphaWatch. I saw an arresting display of Miracle Whip dressing at my local grocery store a couple of weeks ago. Certain members of my household cannot stand the stuff, so we don’t generally buy it, and I had been blissfully unaware of the most recent label:
I
Last month I mentioned a trademark bullying webinar available through Minnesota Continuing Legal Education (MinnCLE), here. Tuition was $95 for 75 minutes of action-packed discussion on this very hot topic, so, a real bargain.
Now, MinnCLE is graciously making it available for viewing free, here, so enjoy. (No CLE credit).
By way of
Can you name the owner of this exclamation mark branding signal?
You may be surprised to learn it is federally-registered in the U.S. as a stand-alone non-verbal trademark.
You may be even more surprised to learn, it was federally-registered without a showing of secondary meaning or acquired distinctiveness, because it was viewed as an inherently distinctive non-verbal trademark.
This is no ordinary exclamation mark, however, the trademark owner claims it in a 3D appearance, does that help?
Here’s another clue: In Latin American countries, the brand name associated with this particular punctuation mark is Pepitos!
Last clue: Would it help to know the goods associated with this registered trademark are chocolate chip cookies?
Answer below the jump.Continue Reading Branding Exclamations!