An interesting Bloomberg article came across my desk a couple weeks ago called, “CBD Craze is Creating a Trademark Problem for a Coffee Brand in Maine.” The article raises a couple of important issues related to the trademark requirement of distinctiveness, as well as the lengths to which one can stretch their trademark protection. The article recounts a coffee shop and wholesale coffee company in Maine called Coffee by Design, that ultimately adopted the acronym for its name, CBD, as its trademark. Coffee by Design appears to have filed for trademark protection of CBD for “coffee” and “coffee shops” in 2009. But with Maine’s legalization of marijuana in 2016 and the rapidly growing popularity of CBD, customers began to get confused, thinking that Coffee by Design had CBD, and that CBD products sold throughout Portland, Maine were sourced from Coffee by Design. According to the owners of Coffee by Design, “the [CBD trademark] filing prevents others, nationwide, from using the term CBD for coffee products and coffee shops,” and that they are “well within [their] rights to prevent others from using the term CBD as a trademark in relation to coffee and coffee shops.” The wording of that last statement is key: a trademark owner can prevent others from using the same mark “as a trademark” in relation to the same goods. The issue that Coffee by Design will face, however, is that other coffee shops are generally not using CBD as a trademark, but as a descriptive term to describe an ingredient added to their beverages. Trademark infringement will be a tough claim to sustain if the shop can’t show that others are using the term CBD as a trademark: in fact, it is well within the rights of others to use CBD to describe cannabidiol. As a matter of public policy, trademark law is not designed to allow trademark owners to prevent others from using descriptive terms in a descriptive manner. This also means that a coffee shop selling CBD-infused coffee (or any other CBD product) could not obtain trademark rights to exclusively use “CBD” on their goods, because such a mark would be deemed merely descriptive. As we have noted before, there is a spectrum of strength when it comes to trademarks. The distinctiveness, or strength, of a mark will determine both how well the mark performs from a marketing and branding perspective, as well as the level of legal protection to which it is entitled. When a mark is highly distinctive, identifying the owner of the mark as the source of the goods sold, the mark is strong. And when a mark is not inherently distinctive, or when a mark is the same or very similar to one already used by others, the mark is weak. Here are the types of marks on the spectrum, from strongest to weakest:
Perhaps Coffee by Design was unaware in 2009 that CBD was one of the cannabinoids found in cannabis and therefore could not have anticipated a future in which CBD coffee was a thing. But this is a great lesson in why choosing a distinctive mark (and being realistic about the protection your mark will afford you) is critical for any business, including those in the cannabis industry. Source: https://www.cannalawblog.com/cbd-coffee-and-the-importance-of-distinctiveness-for-trademark-protection/ “CBD” Coffee and the Importance of Distinctiveness for Trademark Protection was first published to The Felicia Sullivan Blog from https://www.feliciasullivan.com/2019/03/06/cbd-coffee-and-the-importance-of-distinctiveness-for-trademark-protection/
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ABOUT USAround Here, It's ALWAYS 4/20! ArchivesNo Archives Categories |