Sunday, November 27, 2011

Trademark dispute over "Eat More Kale"

Does a man in Vermont selling "Eat More Kale" tee-shirts infringe the trademark rights of Chick-fil-a's "eat mor chikin" slogan?

From a story within the Burlington Free Press:

Fast forward to October 2011, when Muller-Moore's new pro bono attorney, Daniel Richardson of Tarrant, Gillies, Merriman & Richardson in Montpelier, received a letter from attorney Auma Reggy of the Atlanta firm, Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, representing Chick-fil-A. Reggy begins by establishing that Chick-fil-A is the "second largest quick-service chicken restaurant company in the United States," and that it has employed a "long-running, award-winning and very popular, successful and well-known advertisement campaign featuring cows encouraging the consumption of chicken rather than beef."

At the center of the campaign, Reggy explains, is Chick-fil-A's intellectual property, the phrase "EAT MOR CHIKIN." The company has used the phrase since at least 1995, Reggy writes, and owns numerous U.S. and international trademark and copyright registrations for both EAT MOR CHIKIN and for cows holding sandwich-boards reading EAT MOR CHIKIN.


One might think that consumers of chicken are not likely to be confused thinking someone pushing kale is the same source as someone pushing chicken. And "more" is different from "mor."

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