In the last year in Los Angeles there has been a feeding frenzy over frozen yogurt. A new chain of stores called Pinkberry has created a product that has customers traveling from miles away and then standing in lines that frequently go outside the store. Pinkberry’s frozen yogurt has a distinctive sweet-sour taste that can be topped with imaginative ingredients like Fruity Pebbles cereal.
The stores ultra-modern interior looks like a Hollywood hipster hangout. Pinkberry started with one store in 2005 but now has more than 10 stores, with plans to expand to many more.
Pinkberry’s success has not gone unnoticed. Several rival frozen yogurt chains have opened in the past year such as Snowberry and Berri Good. The most visible of the competitors is Kiwiberri, which has been described by some journalists as a copycat of Pinkberry right down to the similar style of the yogurt and the interior décor.
Now let’s say you come up with a good business idea and someone tries to take advantage of your hard work by starting a rival copycat business or selling a product with a very similar or even the same name or logo. The solution is to assert your trademark rights. If you have a unique name or logo for your business or your product, you have trademark rights in that name or logo. Although you do not have to register the trademark to protect your rights, it is strongly recommended that you register each trademark because there are certain legal protections that are only available if a trademark is registered.
If your trademark is registered and then someone violates or infringes your trademark, you can file a lawsuit against the violator and if victorious, can recover up to 300 percent of your lost profits and your attorney fees. In fact, Pinkberry just filed a lawsuit against Kiwiberri for trademark infringement.
Often times, a trademark is a company’s most valuable asset as it represents the goodwill of a brand name that can be world-famous. Although your business may not yet be as famous as a company like Coca-Cola, every big business started as a small business and it is never too early to start taking steps to protect the goodwill of your business name or logo.
For more information, please call 661-294-0911.