Gift link:
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Another gift link:
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From the WaPo article:
In Homiahâs letter to Momofuku, its lawyer wrote: âThis isnât Momofukuâs first attempt to register generic and descriptive terms for Asian foods. Your clientâs attempt to own SSĂM SAUCE (U.S. Trademark Application Serial No. 88881122) in 2021 was ruled generic, and demonstrates a pattern to attempt to own generic Asian cultural products to anticompetitive effect.â
âPatternâ seems like bullshit given that Momofuku was selling chili crunch for years and made no effort to trademark it until Chile Colonial sued them.
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Christina Tosi invented the Cereal Milk flavor. Itâs perfectly reasonable that they trademarked it. Anyone who wants to knock off her original idea needs to come up with a different name.
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Looks like pattern of appropriating cultural words for his own profit to me. Also using Momofuku from inventor of instant ramen Momofuku Ando.
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Copyright and trademark attorney Nicholas Wells said he thinks Chang shouldnât have been awarded the exclusive right in the first place because of the âmerely descriptiveâ issue.
Except Momofuku (which != Chang) was not awarded the trademark. Chile Colonial was.
⊠because the companyâs existing âchile crunchâ trademark has been federally registered for more than five years and the owner has filed the necessary paperwork, it âcan no longer be challenged on the ground that itâs merely descriptive.â
Chang has written that the name âMomofukuâ is âan indirect nodâ to Momofuku Ando, the Japanese-Taiwanese inventor of instant ramen. Chang has suggested it is not an accident that he chose a word that sounds similar to the curse word âmotherfuckerâ.[3]
not related to the chili crunch debacle, but i do like MomoIPâs attempt to trademark âbirthday cakeâ in 2015
Only as an ice cream flavor.
" For: Bakery goods, namely, cake balls rolled in crumbs" also Milk Barâs stuff is under a different LLC
That was properly denied, then.
More from the WaPo article:
Before the Momofukuâs product debuted in 2020, the term âchili crunchâ â at least relating to a condiment â did not often appear in news stories, according to a search in the database Nexis. Later that year, the phrase began popping up, in reference to the Momofuku product and more generally.
Thatâs the same conclusion I came to with Google. They thought they came up with an original name. Oops.
That seems to be how they see it too, from the LA Times article you linked above.
Their thoughts on what stifles innovation would be interesting to know
I donât see how applying for a trademark functionally lifts any boats, except her own, since a trademark would only protect her brand, no?
Not here to defend fly by jing but read her substack
I am for the protection of a companyâs hard-earned intellectual property through trademark laws, especially against larger players in a market who have an unfair advantage over an emerging startup. But I also reject the oppressive notion that if one holds a trademark, one MUST necessarily use it to go after all companies big and small with abandon. That excuses the actions of the oppressor as if âtheir hands were tiedâ and there was nothing they could do but go after small disadvantaged mom-and-pop businesses. This view lacks nuance and is categorically false. Holding a trademark does not necessitate using it to intimidate smaller businesses for the purpose of squashing fair competition.
And @robert said it was abandoned but donât see a source
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I have tried so hard to stay out of this discussion but I canât stop myself. Whatever you think about the merits of this situation, sheâs just wrong about US trademark law. You are in fact obligated to police your mark against infringers. All of them, not just big corporations. Failing to do so can dilute your mark, or prevent you from opposing someone elseâs federal registration for a very similar mark. As someone mentioned earlier, that doesnât mean you have to shut the other users down. You can license the mark with whatever conditions you negotiate. And then you do have to monitor the licenseeâs use.
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I am not arguing that Chang/Momofuku is a bully (I have no opinion either way, esp after one of his pre-package noodles didnât agree with my GI tract), but what about the above indicates bragging?
Edit: actually, Iâm actually probably on the side of not having a positive impression of the man after also seeing him shouting at an employee in a public-facing space.
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But on Saturday, when a reporter contacted Jing, the company changed course. It said it now believes âthereâs been enough awareness raised about the descriptive nature of the term, that the USPTO will reconsider the chili/chile crunch trademarks, and we felt comfortable with filing a request to abandon the application for our productâs name, which we have already done as of today.â
How long ago was that? Heâs been apologetic about being an abusive boss through much of his career. There was a lot about that in his podcast with the Joe Beef guys.