LittleBean.com A Portland Vegan Ice Cream Company has to rebrand to LittleChickpea.com because Gerber (a Nestle company) has a trademark for Lil’ Beanies. This is a discontinued product line. Willamette Week covered the story.
From the story:
“Our lawyers reached out to theirs and they said they had discontinued the line and had no intention of doing anything with it,” Camden says. So he opened his store and decided to re-apply for the trademark in a year. But Gerber still wouldn’t budge.
“They said they had no intention of using the trademark but they will keep it until it expires,” Camden says. “We don’t have three to four years to wait.”
Tip of the cap to Lox
Not smart if they didn’t even check when it would expire.
Agreed they should have just used another name from the start.
LittleBean.com sold in May 2018 through Uniregistry for $16,500. That’s a pretty expensive mistake.
well once again wrong advice. If a trademark is on the principal register and is not actively being used…there is no trademark protection. One requirement is continual use of a register tm otherwise it looses tm protection. Additionally the lawyer for little bean is an idiot and should have informed their client that an abandonment procedure would be filed with the supporting documentation from Nestle stating they will never use the tm.
Once again it is not the responsibility to educate ip lawyers that charge 500 an hour and do nothing. As I stated ip lawyers are worthless. Additionally with the filed abandonment charge The little bean lawyers should use the tm infringement scale…appearance is different, sound is different, similarity of marks is different and is not likely to deceive. Little bean is composed of two generic dictionary words.
What the fuck is Nestle and their ip lawyers doing? warehousing abandoned marks?