Comment by NewsaHackO 5 days ago
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.
To me, this would be the expected second step, for someone infringing on their trademark. Like if a person steals your car, then you confront them and try to strike a deal to prevent involvement of authorities. If you ignore that, I think it is reasonable to expect them to report you to the police, and you to get charged with theft.
I don't think they expect to actually get 15M from this suit. Honestly, it seems like they wanted to avoid the suit altogether, because of how it looks from a PR POV.
No, asking a court for a large amount of damages from an LLC is not in any way similar to arson and murder.
The damages listed in a lawsuit have nothing at all to do with the reasonableness of the parties involved.
By the time a lawsuit is filed you are already deep into a civil dispute, and very few civil disputes ever go to trial. Filing a lawsuit at all is the nuclear option for when all reasonableness has already broken down. You only go to court as the nuclear option after both parties reach an impasse.
15M is almost certainly just a result of mathematically adding up the damages the law provides for. That's how going to court generally works -- your lawyer will ask the court for everything the law provides for. Then the court will decide what is reasonable to actually award. Going to court is very expensive, and it is why ~99% of cases settle before going to court.
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.
Go find a picture of the truck.
The entire business is branded like Eggo waffles. The colors used, the font and stylistic “E” are the same, the white outlining of red letters on a yellow field is copied. It isn’t just the name and phrase, the entire brand is copied over.
I’m not making a judgment on the morality of the law. But under the law itself, I can completely understand how Kellog’s has a strong claim here
The stylistic 'E' actually looks nothing alike if you look at the picture in the complaint linked elsewhere in the thread[0]. Just about the only similarity is that it's vaguely cursive red with white outline. The 'E' is probably the most obviously different part.
It's immediately obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that it's a parody, so only a corporate lawyer could be so dishonest as to write that it's "likely to deceive and cause confusion, mistake, or deception among consumers or potential consumers as to the source of origin of Defendant’s goods and services and the sponsorship or endorsement of those goods and services by Kellogg". Their truck screams "this does not follow modern 'corporate' branding/style guides, so is obviously not approved or associated with a multinational company like Kellogg."
Quite interesting to see the product placement examples in the document though as evidence their "renown".
[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ohnd.31...
Are you looking at the Eggo logo in that filing from the 30s? If you look at the modern Eggo logo shown later in the filing compared to the egg roll trucks usage of it in “L’Eggo my eggroll” it is clearly so similar that it is hard to distinguish which “L’Eggo” belongs to the truck if you isolate them.
Parody and fair use are also significantly weakened in law when the use is commercial and without social commentary. Protected parody needs to be more than “I copied your branding style for my business”.
Again I’m not arguing that the law is moral or immoral, just that Kellog’s has a strong claim here under the law given that the branding as a whole is clearly copied from the Eggo brand, and that there is no evidence here that the food truck is trying to make fair use for the purposes of free speech, commentary or parody.
Is anyone going to confuse a waffle with an eggroll? No. But it is perfectly reasonable to think that the food truck is somehow associated with the Eggo food brand. Large corporations do stuff like operate offshoots and pop ups in adjacent niches. Look to IHOP’s brief marketing stunt rebrand to IHOB for an example.
> Do they have "leggo my eggo" itself trademarked?
As a matter of fact, they do:
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=77021301&caseType=SERIAL_...
The full complaint linked above has a full list of trademarks. There's also a claim for trade dress infringement, since the food truck uses the same font and red-yellow-white color scheme.
However, that particular phrase appears to be trademarked for: waffles, pancakes, french toast
Skimming the complaint, Kellogg looks to be arguing it is a well-known mark,[1] and is also making a trade dress claim.
[1] https://www.uspto.gov/ip-policy/trademark-policy/well-known-...
Trademarks are specific to a product/service. This is why Apple the computer company and Apples at my grocery store can coexist.
I hope Apple corp puts a stop to that kind of egregious violation soon
How is a 15M lawsuit ever reasonable in a case like this?