Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Quaker Oats Files Trademark for Football Inspired Cereal

Do you love Cap'n Crunch and football? Then Quaker Oats is coming out with a cereal for you. On February 11th, company filed a federal trademark application for CAP'N CRUNCH'S TOUCHDOWN CRUNCH in Class 030 for "[b]reakfast cereals; [r]eady-to-eat cereals."
The company filed this trademark application on an intent-to-use basis, meaning it is not currently selling this cereal. However, this cereal is not something new. The Quaker Oats Company filed the same application back in 2008 when it ran a limited edition version of Cap'n Crunch's Touchdown Crunch.

Why file another application for the same trademark on the same goods over six years later? Likely because the mark was not continuously used in commerce over the past couple years. Between the fifth and sixth year after a registration, a trademark owner must file a sworn statement (called a Section 8 affidavit) claiming that the mark is still being used in commerce to keep a registration alive. 

The Quaker Oats Company did not file that affidavit for the original registration. Although the company can file the affidavit for a period of six months after the deadline for an addition fee (June 1, 2016 in this case), the company cannot do so if it is not actually using this mark. Therefore, it filed an intent-to-use application instead, which does not require actual use in commerce yet.

This sounds complicated from a trademark standpoint, but it essentially indicates that The Quaker Oats Company ran a limited edition touchdown version of the cereal, stopped selling it, and now has plans to do so again.

No comments:

Post a Comment