Meghans trademark not allowed

[Viviennemary]

The patent office apparently has turned down the trademark of Meghans new jam making business American Riviera Orchard on the grounds that you can't trademark geographical locations. You would have thought somebody would have picked up on this before now.

Duchy Unoriginals

😂😂

Oooh, thank you! I had only ever seen imaes of her sat alone, and I watched the thing on TV.

Yes, she needs something like Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop brand. Simple, catchy name which doesn't really mean anything and can be used for a wide range of products.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yes Goop was how to do it. Just weird enough to be attention-grabbing and curiosity-provoking, very short and easy to remember, easy to SEO and find online because it's not a common word, and personally linked to GP giving it what they like to call a "story" (I hate the storification of everything but it can make sense).

Just read your post and wondered… did she pick the name Goop because the first and last letter are her initials?

According to Paltrow, the company's name came from Peter Arnell telling her that successful internet companies have double Os in their name, and she "wanted it to be a word that means nothing and could mean anything". Adding the double "O" between her initials thus resulted in the company name.

In that case, Meghan should go for MooMoo, MOOM, or DOOM, as her fans insist on calling hr "Duchess Meghan".

I get the sense that she is like some of the people I work for. Huge grand ideas, with an almost blind expectation that it can just be done - without any proper thought process, analysis, scoping, project management.

When the 'expert advisors' point out pitfalls, provide expert advice on what is required, the level of detailed approach needed - it falls of deaf ears. You are accused of putting up unnecessary road blocks, trying to kill the deal etc. etc. They bulldoze their method through (they are the principal) - it inevitably fails, the experts are blamed for the failure and inevitably leave. The cycle repeats.

😂😂 DooM by Meghan!

people like me, you have no idea of my reading tastes, do you normally respond to interaction by attacking. Your post says more about you than me.

Me neither @BemusedAmerican.

They also went after The Trussell Trust, a food bank charity after someone set up a ARO parody U.K. website to raise money for this good cause. The Sussex Squad even complained to the charity commission, and the police accusing the charity of fraud, when they were simply the beneficiary.

MooMoo is a bad idea. I can see some innocent cows in court for trademark infringement. Or at least small dairy farmers.

Have any of you seen "Conan the Barbarian"? The evil villain is named Thulsa Doom. Lots of people yelling "Doom" at him. 😄He runs an evil snake cult.

Terrible choice with names - including the absolutely disgraceful use of Lilibet .... glaringly chosen for trying to cozy up to the queen, particularly bad and thoughtless choice considering their treachery towards the Firm 'we don't have a problem with the queen just the firm and the family' except QE2 was head of all of that ... tone deaf and blind 🤡🤡

All those companies recently invited to partner with her so she can promote their bags and earrings must be mightily unimpressed

Possibly she just feels they should be honoured to have been associated with her at all, @Rhaidimiddim?

And frankly I just don't buy these alleged "difficulties" around setting up a business. I've done it - though admittedly not in the US - and while there's a lot to plough through it's not insurmountable for anyone with average intelligence.
And certainly not when they can access the best advice if they wish ...

Everything they do just gives the impression that they're always 'A day late and a dollar short'. Would they do that deliberately while trying to establish themselves? I don't think it's deliberate, I think they're just a couple of fools.

I never saw it as cozying up - I saw it as a power move, as in "I can do this to you, and there's nothing you do about it".

The thing is, she did it perfectly with her The Tig blog. Means nothing, short and snappy. Tig is 100 times better than Archewell and American Riviera Orchards.

I thought I’d better check on the story so I googled it. And it’s been perfectly accurately described on this thread. 👍

Hilarious! Absolutely brilliant. Never mind their trouble running a business, those two couldn’t run a bath.

A non-registrable brand name. 🙄It’s like something out of a sit-com about useless, gormless ‘celebrities’.

I agree with @Rhaidimiddim Using "Lillibet" was a big middle finger to the Queen, with no thought to the ramifications for the poor kid.

Wasn’t “The Tig” a well known nick name for her favourite wine (Tignanello) though? So it was a thing and it wasn’t her original thought 🤷‍♀️

This is refreshing compared to the sister thread on r/royalsgossip. Lots of insistence there that this is a minor procedural blip and completely normal for trademark applications in the US and in fact, the instagram, video, jam etc wasn't even a "launch", and this is all being manipulated by the British Press. Can anyone recall a celebrity sideline like this where there's all this promo (and that's what it was, whatever anyone tries to argue now) but still no actual product five months later? I can understand her wanting to snap up the Instagram handle, website etc. but this could have been done quietly without all the fanfare, perhaps with a few red herrings thrown in, whilst the trademark was being ironed out.

Apparently they did use a specialist trademark lawyer for the application, which makes the whole thing even more bizarre. No doubt at the outset they could have foreseen the likely pitfalls and given Meghan and Co. a half decent idea of timescale as to how long all this would take.

The main problem is the premature teaser video and website. The key to launching a celebrity housewares brand is actually having product. Securing trademarks, building the website, securing suppliers, and having your distribution system in place should all happen before the initial publicity push. Your infrastructure sitting without sales is expensive, but what is worse is having people excited about your product and having no product to sell. At least a small initial line needs to be in place. It can sell out quickly, you can play up the faux surprise at the incredibly high demand.

I’ll happily defer to any poster who works in trademarks/IP law and who disagrees with me, but, as far as I know, in the UK if a trademark gets turned down on a general principle - rather than a judgement about similarity to an existing mark etc - an appeal will always fail.

I find it hard to think that the US would be much different.