[NA] Trademark Fight

ScottM

ScottM

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iBazinga!
This was in Crain's today. It illustrates how not only patents and copyrights can get into silly fights, but trademarks too.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...deli-over-sandwich-similarities#axzz18irPIu9T

Bascially Jimmy Johns is complaining that a small local deli's turkey sandwich is too much like theirs, having "virtually the same ingredients." Imagine that a turkey sandwich being like, well, a turkey sandwich.

I wonder if people will be turning away from Jimmy John's or giving up on turkey sandwiches?

And on a pseudo aviation theme, I parked my plane next to the Jimmy John's corporate jet in a hangar in Champaign, IL a couple of years ago.
 
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There is a whole chain built around PB&J sandwiches.

I wonder if they have a trademark on 'applying peanut butter (or any other nutty buttery substance) onto a slice of bread followed by a second layer of jelly/jam/preserve.
 
ScottM said:
And on a pseudo aviation theme, I parked my plane next to the Jimmy John's corporate jet in a hangar in Champaign, IL a couple of years ago.
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What type was it? If their jet's as fast as their service, must be an SR-71. :yes:
 
They aren't suing over similar ingredients. They are suing over the use of the names which use "virtually the same ingedients" in the sandwiches.

Hunter's Club vs Hunt Club
Turkey Tom vs Tom Turkey

It would be like having a place in Queens called McDowell's, using golden arcs instead of golden arches for your logo, and making a burger called the Big Mick with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions but NO sesame seeds on the bun.

In this case I agree with Jimmy Johns.
 
As I understand it, at one point KFCM was #1 in runway incursions. A number of these were the Jimmy John's delivery guy taking a shortcut across the runways to deliver to the tower.

(Just to add some aviation content, eh?)
 
EdFred said:
It would be like having a place in Queens called McDowell's, using golden arcs instead of golden arches for your logo, and making a burger called the Big Mick with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions but NO sesame seeds on the bun.
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"That's beautiful! What is that, velvet!?"
 
Funny.

I see it with "Hunt Club"; but, "Tom Turkey"? That's a generic term, in common use, means male turkey and meant it in common use a long time before there was ever a Jimmy John's.
 
SCCutler said:
Funny.

I see it with "Hunt Club"; but, "Tom Turkey"? That's a generic term, in common use, means male turkey and meant it in common use a long time before there was ever a Jimmy John's.
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Reminds of the push to talk trademark controversy a few years ago between Verizon and Nextel. Each claimed trademark on that term even though it was easily shown that the term originated in the 1940s when Motorola coined it for their very famous portable two way radio used in WW2.
 
EdFred said:
It would be like having a place in Queens called McDowell's, using golden arcs instead of golden arches for your logo, and making a burger called the Big Mick with two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions but NO sesame seeds on the bun.
.
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No it's more like calling your double decker Big anything Big becasue the Big Boy was first.

Let's see, Big Mac, Big Barney, Big Chief, .... Big Whoop!
 
ScottM said:
This was in Crain's today. It illustrates how not only patents and copyrights can get into silly fights, but trademarks too.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/arti...deli-over-sandwich-similarities#axzz18irPIu9T

Bascially Jimmy Johns is complaining that a small local deli's turkey sandwich is too much like theirs, having "virtually the same ingredients." Imagine that a turkey sandwich being like, well, a turkey sandwich.

I wonder if people will be turning away from Jimmy John's or giving up on turkey sandwiches?

And on a pseudo aviation theme, I parked my plane next to the Jimmy John's corporate jet in a hangar in Champaign, IL a couple of years ago.
Click to expand...

To answer your question, yes, I would stop going to Jimmy John's in favor of going to the deli, if that happened near me - or at least, if I thought Jimmy John's was being unreasonable (not really sure about that). And if I ever went to Jimmy John's, which I don't.
 
I had a Jimmy John sandwich once. Nothing special. I'd rather support the local deli.
 
a sandwich is a sandwich is a sandwich - so maybe the heirs of the Earl of Sandwich ought to sue?

Ok, there is one sandwich that stands out for me - Dominick's Deli in Fallbrook, CA - the turkey avocado is good enough that I make a detour to Fallbrook whenever I'm in SoCal - first ate there in the 80s when I worked across the street
 
With all this trademark nonsense, I'm surprised Coca Cola hasn't tried to trademark Santa Claus. They did invent the old boy.
 
steingar said:
With all this trademark nonsense, I'm surprised Coca Cola hasn't tried to trademark Santa Claus. They did invent the old boy.
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Coca-Cola didn't invent St. Nick The ad agency invented him being the classic white bearded guy in the red suit.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I had a Jimmy John sandwich once. Nothing special. I'd rather support the local deli.
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JJ's specialty isn't food - It's speed. Compared to JJ's, nobody else has any business calling themselves "fast" food.

I've not always had this experience elsewhere, but there's a JJ's a block from our engineering building. I can be in and out in about a minute. Walk in the door - Almost never a line despite the number of people they serve, because they're fast - Say "French 10 with". Person behind the register tells me how much it's gonna be, I hand 'em money, they hand me change and a sandwich (which has just been launched from the other end of the counter and caught by the person manning the register).

It's pretty nice, if you're in a hurry.
 
This just in........General Dynamics Electric Boat Division suing Subway for using the term "Subs"......details at 11.
 
Pizza Pizza was a joint in my town for years before Little Caesars even thought of coming to the state. They were sued out of their name. Closed soon after.
 
Howdja like to be that lucky fellow, Uzi Nissan (born to that name), a computer guy and early-adopter of the Global InterWebz, who had the audacity to register the URL, Nissan.com, as a place to promote his business (which, oddly enough, was called "Nissan Computer" because, like, that's his name?

Nissan Motors sued his fuzzy little backside (fair disclosure: I have no idea whether Mr. Nissan's backside is actually fuzzy or not; it's a literary device. Get over it.), and he was bowled over all over the place.

But (at the end of the day) he still owns the URL.

My hero.

http://www.digest.com/Big_Story.php
http://www.nissan.com/
 
SCCutler said:
Howdja like to be that lucky fellow, Uzi Nissan (born to that name), a computer guy and early-adopter of the Global InterWebz, who had the audacity to register the URL, Nissan.com, as a place to promote his business (which, oddly enough, was called "Nissan Computer" because, like, that's his name?

Nissan Motors sued his fuzzy little backside (fair disclosure: I have no idea whether Mr. Nissan's backside is actually fuzzy or not; it's a literary device. Get over it.), and he was bowled over all over the place.

But (at the end of the day) he still owns the URL.

My hero.

http://www.digest.com/Big_Story.php
http://www.nissan.com/
Click to expand...

Cool - I did not know that.

However, rather than waste money on a lawsuit with Nissan, I'd rather be another guy.

See, back in the early days of the Internet, Gateway (yes, the computer company) was still Gateway 2000. For some reason, they decided to be "hip" and registered the domain name gw2k.com. So, along came a guy with more of an eye on profit than Mr. Nissan's eye on principle.

He registered gateway2000.com and put up a porn site. Gateway couldn't afford the bad PR of leaving that up for the amount of time it would take for a lawsuit, so they paid him off quite handsomely for the immediate takedown of the porn site and the domain name.

Wonder if it's the same guy who started whitehouse.com, another infamous porn site. I thought it eventually got purchased by the gov't, but now whitehouse.com points to a placeholder site advertising personal injury lawyers.
 
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