For a few months now, the Minneapolis skyway system has been flooded with a variety of fresh, creative, eye-popping advertising to promote Pepsi’s new bubly sparkling water collection:
Although not a lie (the bottles I’ve seen clearly reference Pepsi), you’d never know from this ad or the trademark registration that Pepsi is behind bubly, since
A recent advertisement caught my ear because it involved financial services offered by a guy named Charles Hughes a/k/a Chuck Hughes and the catchy marketing phrase Trade Like Chuck:
It instantly reminded me of a piece I wrote in 2010 called: Exposing Two-Face Brands. One of the branding truncation examples I wrote about
A recent stroll through a big box store opened my eyes to a brand of steel toe boots I hadn’t encountered before, take a look at the CAT that will be protecting my son’s toes this Summer:
CAT is an excellent example of successful trademark truncation, a single-syllable truncated brand name for the four-syllable
My daughter captured this striking photo on a recent trip to Times Square in New York City:
Here is my less-artsy close-up of the same advertising, to focus in on the Snapchat logo, complete with its rounded-corner square border and dot matrix surrounding the ghost shape:
What do you think, should we add the ghost
It has been a while since a billboard campaign has caught my interest and attention, but the currently running Absolut Goes Dark ads are an exception worth noting:
Isn’t it interesting — at least in this context — how the simple references to Jack, Johnnie, and Jim, draw an obvious comparison to the distilled spirits
– Draeke Weseman, Weseman Law Office, PLLC
A benefit corporation is the term used when a company is created under corporate law and should not be confused with a “B Corp,” which refers to a company that is certified by B Lab to meet specific standards for social and environmental performance.
Why Consider a Benefit Corporation? Doug Bend and Alex King, Forbes.com (May 30, 2014)
Starting on January 1, 2015, Minnesota businesses will have the option to incorporate in Minnesota as benefit corporations, a new type of for-profit entity that commits to pursue social goals. More than half of the states in the United States have enacted some type of legislation allowing for benefit corporations (Maryland was the first in 2010).
Benefit corporations arose in response to the growing demand for socially conscious businesses. The group largely responsible for the benefit corporation movement is B Lab, a 501(c)(3) non-profit formed in 2007 that evaluates and certifies businesses according to a stakeholder and environmental impact scorecard, while also acting as a public promoter and supporter of such businesses.
B Lab (through B Lab IP, LLC) owns several trademark registrations or pending applications for benefit corporation related marks, including the following:
• Brought To You By the Community of Certified B Corporations
On its website, B Lab describes its role as follows: “B Corps are certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today there is a growing community of over 1,000 Certified B Corps . . . .”
Despite this clear statement about B Corps and the certification provided by B Lab, no trademark applications or registrations exist for the truncated marks “B Corp” or “B Corps,” or for the certification mark “Certified B Corps.” Instead, the marks registered by B Lab are service marks applied to “association services,” business “testing, analysis, and evaluation,” and “quality assurance” services.
This is surprising because both B Lab and the companies adopting the B Corp certification routinely use variations on the B Lab marks while mentioning certification. For example, below is a screenshot from the B Lab home page, followed by a screenshot from Patagonia’s website, both using the truncated B Corp mark and both prominently using the unregistered “Certified B Corporation” mark:
Continue Reading Would Benefit Corporations Benefit from Some Trademark Clarity?