Intellectual property attorney Anne Glazer was quoted in Forbes in an article titled “What Can Mardi Gras Teach Us About Food Trademarks?,” published March 5, 2019. The article looks at how food products are trademarked and examines several disputes that arose over trademarks for products made in New Orleans.
A proposed trademark will have a better chance of being registered if it is “distinctive,” i.e., a trademark that is not related to the nature of the product may be more likely to be protected than a trademark that is purely descriptive of the product. For trademarking purposes, the idea of distinctiveness can also apply to the configuration of a product, such as the shape of a Goldfish cracker.
“In order to be registrable, any product configuration must have acquired distinctiveness and it must be non-functional,” Glazer said, adding that “these are generally difficult standards to meet.”