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September 15, 2005

Cold Cereal Battle Heats Up

Cereal bars may be the next great thing to happen to fast food. But, should the first person to capitalize upon the idea get the exclusive rights to the concept? Maybe. According to this, The owners of Cereality are very serious about cereal. They have sent informative letters to competitors "Bowls - A Cereal Joint" and The Cereal Bowl. According to the article, the letters threaten "serious legal consequences" for infringement of Cereality's trademarks - I found 5 registered and 2 currently pending in the USPTO.

While I don't see much similarity in the trademarks, Cereality also has a patent pending for "Methods and Systems for Providing Food, Beverages, and Associated Goods and Services in a Retail Environment." However, a pending patent doesn't mean much until the patent issues, and a non-final rejection was mailed last month. So, the question remains whether the patent will issue, and if so, whether the patent will stand up to the test of litigation.

However this dispute turns out, I'm looking forward to visiting a cereal bar soon.



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Posted by Melody Wirz at 10:36 AM.
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fyi: "bowls, a cereal joint" recently lost its insurance coverage due to issues regarding cereality's patents, copyrights and unsubstantiated rumors in the press. bowls is independantly owned, in a small town, without a strong financial backing. this blow comes as a personal humiliation, and can hardly be recognized as a simple matter of business or right infringement when the businesses are separated by hundreds of miles. it is very unfortunate that companies such as cereality, who is evidently aiming at becoming a corporation, would make it this much tougher for independantly minded people to try and make a small-town business work in an already stretched economic climate.

Posted by: anon at December 17, 2005 06:21 PM