Decisions · 86757390
In re General Mills IP Holdings II, LLC
Serial No. 86757390 · Decided 2017-08-22 · Other
What happened
Refusal upheld — General Mills could not register the color yellow for Cheerios packaging because so many other cereal makers sell in yellow boxes that shoppers do not see the color alone as identifying a single source.
The marks
Applicant
Color yellow
Toroidal-shaped, oat-based breakfast cereal
Why this decision is significant
Major precedential authority on single-color marks: the color yellow on Cheerios packaging fails to function as a mark despite 75+ years of use and a billion-dollar advertising record, because widespread third-party use of yellow cereal packaging defeats ‘substantially exclusive’ use — also a leading treatment of survey-methodology flaws.
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
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