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From ArsTechnica
General Mills argued that it deserved to be awarded the trademark status because "consumers have come to identify the color yellow" on boxes of oats cereal with "the Cheerios brand." It has been marketed in yellow packaging since 1945, with billions in sales.
The board noted that "there is no doubt that a single color applied to a product or its packaging may function as a trademark and be entitled to registration under the Trademark Act." But that's only if those colors have become "inherently distinctive" in the eyes of consumers. Some of those examples include UPS "Brown;" T-Mobile "Magenta;" Target "Red;" John Deere "Green & Yellow;" and Home Depot "Orange." It goes without saying that anybody can still use those colors predominately in their marketing, but not direct competitors.
Regarding the box of Cheerios, however, the court ruled that consumers don't necessarily associate the yellow box of cereal with Cheerios, despite General Mills' assertion to the contrary. Consumers are confronted with a multitude of yellow boxes of oats cereal, the appeal board noted. By comparison, T-Mobile has only a handful of competitors, and none of them uses the magenta color as a distinctive mark, the appeal board said.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 28 2017, @04:55PM (3 children)
Not if you're from the Champagne region of France and have been marketing your grapes for centuries.
Champagne got into the unfortunate position of becoming associated with a process, and actually a result of that process, that produces sparkling wine. They were the original and only their grapes reached the public as sparkling wine for long enough that the name association stuck. Now that any baboon can inject high pressure CO2 into a bottle and produce a sparkling wine, it isn't exactly right or fair to water down the Champagne brand (of grapes) by using the name inappropriately - but, lack of respect for the name-holders' rights has gone on long enough that it is perceived in the public consciousness as "absurd" that they should care.
It would be like calling all gravelly vocaled basic guitar and drum rock and roll with vague references to Jersey "Springsteen" - at once unfair to the artists not-Springsteen who make the music, and also unfair to Springsteen himself associating his name with product of questionable quality that he did not produce.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @06:20PM (2 children)
Intuition would make you think what you just said is right. After all Champagne has the trademark so surely, surely that means something.
Unfortunately, you are not right. Again, your view of trademarks is very "optimistic." No [wikipedia.org], Champagne did not invent champagne. It was invented and widely shared (the knowledge of that is) by an English scientist in the 1600s. And his invention in turn was a modification of an invention from some monks from Carcassonne in the 1530s. To be clear his recipe is what Champagne would rip off - exactly. Though that'd take a couple of centuries. Champagne, France produced 0 champagne until the 19th century.
And it gets even better. There happens to be a village in Champagne, Switzerland that has made a popular wine called Champagne dating back to 1657 - hundreds of years before the first bottle of champagne was ever made in Champagne. Thanks to trademark law they've been forced to change the name of their wine because trademarks are completely and absolutely illogical. And this is all incredibly typical for trademarks and trademark law.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday August 28 2017, @10:05PM (1 child)
Yes. It means only wine produced in the Champagne region as defined by France's appellation d'origine contrôlée laws can be called champagne in France. The same way only wines produced in the Burgundy region in France can be called burgundy in France. Many wine producers around the world used to usurp French appellation names for products that ranged from somewhat similar to almost, but not quite, entirely unlike wine products. Most now have stopped this practice and instead use somewhat more accurate varietal names and/or local or proprietary names, but other than in France (and perhaps throughout the EU now) I do not believe this is trademarked or illegal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:17AM
This is a very intuitive and logical view but once again completely inaccurate. Intuition and logic have no place when it comes to trademarks and trade agreements. The story of how France managed to make it illegal for the vast majority of the world to use the world champagne to describe champagne starts as far back as the Treaty of Versailles - yip, the treaty that ended World War 1. As mentioned now the EU even forced Champagne, Switzerland to stop selling its wine as Champagne even though it had been doing it for hundreds of years before Champagne, France had sold a single bottle of champagne. This [winesandvines.com] provides some information on the background of how Champagne came to own a worldwide trademark on champagne. It's lacking some details, like the Treaty of Versailles section 275, but it's a good overview! That article also covers the reason why a handful of champagne producers (particularly in California) are allowed to call their champagne... champagne.