Ben & Jerry's finds fault with 'Ben & Joy's' at fair
Mark Larson
Staff Writer
For 27 years, Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's ice cream has brought us colorful cartons of ice cream with cartoony-sounding flavor names like Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia.
They're the creations of a pair of smiling dudes whose cultural affinities seem much more closely aligned with tie-dyed bib overalls, graying ponytails and Grateful Dead music than anything corporate, such as hardball trademark lawyers.
But corporate trademark lawyers for Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings Inc. saw something they didn't like at the recent California State Fair in Sacramento: an ice cream vending booth calling itself "Ben & Joy's," on signs that allegedly copied the type style and color scheme of the Ben & Jerry's logo.
On Aug. 26, the dairy-products moguls' law firm, Duane Morris LLP of New York City and San Francisco, sent a letter telling the Arizona-based soft-serve ice cream vendors to knock off using Ben & Joy's as their booth's name -- and to quit selling ice cream until they did so. Their signs, the lawyers say, constituted an intentional attempt to benefit from the famed, and trademarked, Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
The lawyers got no reply. So on Sept. 1, they filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in federal court in Sacramento against Ben and Joy Pickett, the booth's owners, and the company that books them for fairs, Arizona-based Ray Cammack Shows Inc.
That did the trick. The Picketts' attorney, Betty Fracisco, says that beginning the day after the suit was filed, the couple began rebranding their business as Joy & Ben's and changed its logo and signs.
The couple travels to the largest fairs in California and other states to sell its soft-serve ice cream. "They bent over backward to put these people at bay," she says.
Greg Gulia, one of the attorneys filing the suit, had no comment. But as far as Fracisco is concerned, the case is closed.
Chef2Chef News Desk