Comment by mattmaroon
3 days ago
Last year in my area, a food truck decided to call itself Leggo My Egg Roll, and obvious play on Eggo waffles tagline.
Kellogg sent them a cease and desist, they decided to ignore it. Kellogg then offered to pay them to rebrand, they still wouldn’t.
They then sued for $15 million.
My old local brewery had a Leggo My Ego[1] beer they also were served a cease and desist by Kellogg over... they still make it, it's just now called the Unlawful Waffle[2] which is a bit funnier if you happen to know the lore/reason.
1. https://untappd.com/b/arizona-wilderness-brewing-co-leggo-my...
2. https://untappd.com/b/arizona-wilderness-brewing-co-unlawful...
Funny story but the taste scores don’t look to great. Do you like it?
It’s one of those types you have to be the person that likes that style. It’s my friends favorite rotator but I think it’s a decent try-it-once beer, that is only around for a little while at a time.
The brewery itself though is one of my favorites to this day with, in my opinion, the best food I've ever encountered at something that identifies itself first as a "brewery." I don't visit the area without making a stop there.
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Funny. I was expecting LEGO not Kellogg.
...and then what happened?
it’s in the discovery process with a deadline of February 23rd, at which time kellogg’s is to prepare their argument and motion for summary judgement. If that’s denied it tentatively goes to 3-4 day trial in July.
Court listener:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70447787/kellogg-north-...
Pacer (requires account, but most recent doc summarized )
https://ecf.ohnd.uscourts.gov/doc1/141014086025?caseid=31782...
I never saw them again (and I host large food truck festivals here) so I just assumed they threw in the towel. I did not know they are still operating but apparently so.
I have to imagine they’ll spend more time and money fighting this suit than they did starting the food truck. I see no reason you wouldn’t just rebrand. The name is mid at best anyway.
But also, I’m kinda rooting for them. From a distance though.
Good question
https://local12.com/news/nation-world/kellogg-leggo-my-eggro...
Could they have gotten around this by actually serving Eggo waffles? Would that have then fallen under nominative fair use?
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[flagged]
It actually looks like they were pretty reasonable here, as they offered money for the company to help rebrand even though they were clearly infringing on their copyright. Of course, there are three sides to every story.
How is a 15M lawsuit ever reasonable in a case like this?
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Trademark, not copyright. Legally they are very different.
Clearly infringing on what? Do they have "leggo my eggo" itself trademarked? And is it really reasonable to think there's consumer confusion between a waffle and an egg roll that isn't using the word "eggo"?
I would say they're clearly not infringing on any plain "eggo" trademark.
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It's US law.
If Kellogg doesn't defend their trademark, they lose it.
An amicable middle ground might be for Kellogg to let the business purchase rights for $1, but if that happened it would open up a flood of this.
Kellogg has so much money in that brand recognition, they'd lose far more than $15 million if it became a generic slogan. The $15 million is a token amount to get the small business to abandon its use. Kellogg doesn't want to litigate. They tried several times not to litigate.
I'm sure Kellogg would be happy to pay the business more than the cost of repainting their truck, buying some marketing materials, pay for the trouble, etc. It's easy good will press for Kellogg and the business gets a funny story and their own marketing anecdote. It's cheaper than litigation, too.
this isnt a great law though.
a non competing pun ahould have similar carve outs to fair use, to save both the trademark owner, jokester, and courts a bunch of time and money.
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Did Kellogg actual win according to this supposed law you cite? Did they prove that their trademark was used?
Or are you blindly guessing?
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> The way trademarks work is that if you don't actively defend them you weaken your rights.
I mean this is the OP sentence, it's not about the food truck, it's about setting a precedent that you don't care, which costs you later when a competing brand starts distributing in a way that can actually confuse consumers.
Has any court ever ruled that a trademark was abandoned, merely on the grounds that its owners didn't try to prosecute a borderline infringement case?
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