The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (“TTB”) approved a winery’s label for its ELOUAN pinot noir. A class action under California’s Unfair Competition Law was brought alleging that the label’s references to Oregon’s Coasts were misleading, as while the grapes came from Oregon, the wine was created in Napa, California. Defendant moves to
Comite Interprofessional du vin de Champagne, the body charged with administering the CHAMPAGNE appellation of origin, fails to establish trademark rights in the term and thus fails in a UDRP against the registrant of CHAMPAGNE.CO (who had been warehousing the name). The UDRP doesn’t extend to apples of oregon appellations of origin. CIVC had had
Wall Street Journal article: English Village Tries to Milk a Connection to Its Cheesy Past:
STILTON, England — This small hamlet shares its name with a famous curd. But under European Union law, it’s illegal to make Stilton cheese in Stilton.
The bar on producing Stilton cheese here is a curious consequence of EU
Scotsman: Chinese Offer Hope Of Action on Fake Scotch.
The Scotch Whisky Association has been campaigning for increased protection in China for some time. The whisky market for Scotch is worth £44 million a year to Scottish distillers and it is one of the fastest-growing in the world.
However, producers have been alarmed by
DailyIndia: “Sindh High Court to hear Basmati Trademark Issue”
The botom video was made by a Starbucks representative and the top video is from Arnold and Porter, which represents the Ethiopian government.
A Law.com article discussing the dispute is here.
The trademark issue (as opposed to the overall business issue) is that Ethiopia filed for standard trademark, as opposed to certification mark, protection
The Food and Drug Administration will now allow vendors of surimi, imitation crab, to call their product ‘crab-flavored seafood, upsetting crab fishermen.
Restaurant chains are using langostino, which some believe are a form of hermit crab or prawn, and calling it lobster, upsetting Maine lobstermen.
Plankton is trying to steal the formula
SIDAMO and HARAR are coffee growing regions in Ethiopia. It appears that those terms are widely used to refer to the beans grown in those regions. The Government of Ethiopia filed U.S. trademark applications for those terms. As far as I can discern from the PTO website, these are registrations for ‘regular’ registrations on the