American riviera is the very widely used nickname for Santa Barbara. And you cannot trade mark a geographical name or its common nickname. Obviously as you can’t claim it as yours. There is also already someone selling home goods, ie candles under American riviera brand.
as such, she can keep it, but if it is ever successful every tom dick and harry can copy her and under cut her. She will have no control or exclusivity. People can flood the market with aro jams for a fiver, and make it look identical. And she can’t do anything about it, as it is not her intellectual property.
Or she has to change it and totally relaunch. Either way it is a disaster for the aro brand. And Netflix won’t touch it if she doesn’t have the rights to the name.
thats what I mean by doing everything wrong. When you launch a project, you have ip lawyers, branding and naming experts, you first globally and check the name translated in every country, make sure it doesn’t mean something untoward somewhere,or that no one is using it in any where in the world, or if they are, wait for, you don’t want to launch then find out it’s the name of a condom or porn mag for example, in some distant land, then you apply for your ip, which takes up to a year after submission, and only during that would you find out if anyone else has tried to trademark it at the same time. Hence why you keep it a closely guarded secret till the ip is granted. You also should dp market research or focus groups to check thoughts on it.
many big companies actually patent numerous names at once, then when they launch a product simply pick one.
thr whole process you just hire external consultants to do. Many may companies provide the name/word/brand search expertise. It doesn’t cost much. Same for the focus group feedback,it’s no biggie. Standard practice.
theyve done none of that, they didn’t even know you can’t patent a geography or its nickname, they didn’t fill in the documentation right, didn’t even sign it right. It is literally amateur hour, school,kids could do better.