Decisions · 85876688
In re Empire Technology Development LLC
Serial No. 85876688 · Decided 2017-08-03 · Other
What happened
Refusal upheld — COFFEE FLOUR names the product itself (flour made from coffee-cherry skins and pulp), and even the company that invented the category cannot register the generic name of the goods, not even on the Supplemental Register.
The marks
Applicant
COFFEE FLOUR (standard characters)
Flour made by processing and blending together coffee cherry skins, pulp, and pectin for use, alone or in combination with other plant and milk based products, as a dry ingredient in food and beverage products for consumer use (Class 30)
Why this decision is significant
Precedential 51-page genericness decision for a category creator: even the first and only producer of coffee-cherry flour cannot register the generic compound COFFEE FLOUR on the Supplemental Register — a thorough Marvin Ginn application with a McCarthy category-creator analysis.
Research significance is Trademark Valet's editorial rating of how useful a decision is to practitioners. It is not a statement of precedential weight — that is the separate Precedential field, which comes from the Board.
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The original record
Read the opinion and every filing on the Board's own docket. The summary above is our paraphrase, not a quotation from the opinion. The opinion is the authority.
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