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Nestle Petitions To Cancel ‘Seattle Strong’ Coffee Trademark, Arguing It Owns Seattle
(www.techdirt.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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OK, fuck Nestlé, but I expected this to be worse. Seattle's Best Coffee could reasonably be confused with Seattle Strong coffee by an uninformed consumer. This is one of the few Nestlé cases where it can be said to be reasonable. It pains me to say that.
It's a generic name and the only similarity is a city that's commonly associated with the product. If I made a bourbon named Kentucky's Favorite and later someone came around and made a bourbon called Preference of Kentucky that would be fair.
You example is less similar than this one is, but you think it could be argued to be confusing to a consumer? I think your example could have an argument, but it wouldn't be as strong as this case.
Seattle [adjective] Coffee is very similar, especially since Best and Strong could be assumed to be different products by the same company.