The Decades-Long Trademark Dispute Over 'Pretzel Crisps' Comes To Its Obvious End

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It's quite incredible how often the unfortunate growth of ownership culture in America produces silly trademark disputes over terms that obviously shouldn't be valid trademarks. While examples of this are legion, let's get right into what has become a decade-plus long dispute over "pretzel crisps". Snyder's, acquired by Princeton Vanguard, has long made a "pretzel crisp" product. In 2004, the USPTO registered the company's "pretzel crisp" mark, but as a supplemental to an earlier registration, deeming it "descriptive". If you want to argue that the term "pretzel crisp" is not descriptive, well, don't because you're wrong. Even Princeton Vanguard didn't argue differently until 2009, when it attempted to argue that the term had acquired distinctiveness in the public, associated with the company's brand and product. The USPTO remained unconvinced when Frito-Lay opposed the registration as it had its own similar product, with that opposition going so far as to actually seek to have any registration for the term canceled as generic.From there, the companies found themselves in lawsuit-land.(Note to the reader: this is normally where I would include a useful pull-quote from the bakeryandsnacks.com link above about how two federal appeals courts ruled against Snyder's, affirming the mark as generic, but unfortunately that website seems to think that disallowing any copy/paste of its text is somehow the same as enforcing copyright. When attempting to do so, you get a copyright warning. Now, I could simply type out the quote and use the text anyway, given that such use would fall squarely in fair use territory, but instead I'll use this space to give a big "fuck you!" to bakeryandsnacks.com. You're welcome for some traffic, you restrictive ass-bags!)Anyhoo, while two losses in federal court really should have been the end of this, yet another civil action was brought by Princeton Vanguard in the US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Both parties asked for summary judgement as to whether the term "pretzel crisp" can be registered as a trademark or if it's generic. The court declined to grant summary judgement based on a procedural technicality. But the court did still rule on the overall question of the generic nature of the term.

Especially significant here, the law forbids trademarking generic terms, even when a putative mark holder engages in successful efforts to establish consumer recognition of an otherwise generic term. Id. at 193-94. “[N]o matter how much money and effort the user of a generic term has poured into promoting the sale of its merchandise and what success it has achieved in securing public identification, it cannot deprive competing manufacturers of the product of the right to call an article by its name.”...In sum, courts have long sought to foreclose companies from monopolizing common terms, holding that no single competitor has the right to “corner the market” on ordinary words and phrases.

Although the Court concludes that the combination of the generic elements “pretzel” and “crisps” does not create any additional meaning for consumers from which they can distinguish Plaintiffs’ product and thus indicates that PRETZEL CRISPS is generic, the Court does not rest its finding of genericness on that finding. Rather, after considering de novo all the evidence offered by the Parties which bears on consumers’ perception of the mark, the Court finds that, on balance, a preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that the mark, considered only in its entirety, is generic.

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Most Used Electric Car Buyers Have No Way To Confirm Vehicle Battery Health

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As we make the shift from gas to electric vehicles, there are a few issues we still haven't really paved the way for. One is the fact that, with gas taxes being the primary way we fund highway infrastructure, we need to develop alternative infrastructure funding (not a topic that tends to get priority in a hype and flash-obsessed culture, as John Oliver has been quick to remind everyone). The 18.4 cents a gallon federal gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993, and the Congressional Budget Office says that if the funding system doesn't evolve by 2030, federal transportation funding will exceed its budget by a cool $188 billion.The other problem, highlighted by Aaron Gordon at Wired, is that used car buyers and sellers currently have no way to confirm the battery health of a used electric car. Given the used car market is twice as big as the new car market, you can probably see how this could become a notable problem. Especially given that the battery health meter on most of these vehicles can be reset, allowing the seller of the car to effectively lie to buyers about how much life the battery has left:

"Churchill noticed something was wrong on his drive back home. When he left, the car estimated it had 80 miles of range. By the time he finished his 25-mile commute, it said it had 30 miles of range left. And in the next few days, Churchill said the battery health meter lost two bars. When he called the dealer to complain, he was shuffled between departments and ultimately ignored.After doing some research, Churchill learned the battery health meter can be reset using a car diagnostic tool. After resetting, the meter will display all 12 bars for a short period before recalibrating after some use, just as Churchill's did. During this time, the car is essentially lying about its battery health."

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