Decisions · 87354443
In re Country Oven, Inc.
Serial No. 87354443 · Decided 2019-11-18 · Section 2(d) Ex Parte Appeal
What happened
The Board affirmed refusal of the identical mark COUNTRY OVEN for retail and custom bakery services because a different company already owns a decades-old registration for COUNTRY OVEN bread buns, and the evidence showed bakeries commonly sell baked goods like buns under the very same mark.
The marks
Applicant
COUNTRY OVEN
"Self-serve retail bakery shops; Retail bakery shops; bakery services, namely, online retail bakery shops" in International Class 35 and "Bakery services, namely, the manufacture of bakery products to the order and/or specification of others" in International Class 40
Cited registration
COUNTRY OVEN
"bread buns" in International Class 30
How the marks compared
| Dimension | Finding | What the Board said |
|---|---|---|
| sound | Similar | Marks are identical. |
| appearance | Similar | Marks are identical. |
| meaning | Similar | Marks are identical; no evidence of a different connotation in the services context versus the goods context. |
| commercial impression | Similar | Marks are identical and both evoke the nature and style of how the products are baked. |
Identical marks (standard character COUNTRY OVEN vs. the legally equivalent typed mark COUNTRY OVEN).
du Pont factors that bore on the outcome
| # | Factor | Weight | What the Board found |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Similarity of the marks | Dispositive — Favored Refusal | The identical COUNTRY OVEN marks weighed heavily toward confusion. |
| 2 | Relatedness of the goods or services | Dispositive — Favored Refusal | Bread buns and retail bakery services are related — bakeries commonly sell their own baked goods. |
| 3 | Similarity of trade channels | Favored Refusal | The trade channels overlap. |
| 4 | Conditions of sale and buyer sophistication | Favored Refusal | Ordinary consumers buying inexpensive bakery goods favor confusion. |
| 13 | Any other established fact probative of the effect of use | Neutral | The USPTO’s issuance of the applicant’s prior registrations did not weigh against confusion. |
Why this decision is significant
Precedential decision applying and clarifying the identical-marks doctrine’s effect on required goods relatedness, the limits of the Coors Brewing/St. Helena ‘something more’ requirement, and the prior-registration coexistence factor under Strategic Partners/TMEP 1207.01, all in a single opinion.
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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