The Peace, Love, Popcorn logo is being challenged by the Popcorn Factory.
The Popcorn Factory's logo
Here’s the story of how peace and love turned into a lawsuit about popcorn.
In May 2008, Gary Paparella and his youngest daughter, Meagan, were at a Pittsburgh restaurant doodling logos and names on napkins for a gourmet popcorn and candy store. The family was moving to Frisco, Texas, for Paparella’s job at Dr Pepper Snapple Group and had decided to leave the corporate world behind to open a family business.
That’s when 19-year-old Meagan wrote the words “love peace popcorn,” doodling a heart, a peace sign and a piece of popcorn. Today, the brick and mortar store sells “peace love popcorn” T-shirts, fudge and, of course, popcorn in more than 60 flavors — even dill pickle-flavored. They’re on Twitter, Facebook and online with three registered domain names. They even trademarked the name and logo.
Wednesday, The Popcorn Factory LLC in Lake Forest, a 1-800-FLOWERS.COM company, hit Paparella’s mom-and-pop store got hit with a federal lawsuit for trademark infringement and cybersquatting. In the suit, The Popcorn Factory, which claims to sell more than 1 million pounds of popcorn every year, says that when it comes to peace, love and popcorn, they were there first.
In Spring 2008, the company claims, they began marketing Popcorn Factory products under the slogan “Peace Love Popcorn,” also combined with (you guessed it) a doodle of a peace sign, a heart and a piece of (smiling) popcorn. Their catalogs and online store are filled with the doodle.
“We knew nothing of their business,” Paparella said, answering the phone at his shop in Texas. “We came up with this name and registered it as a trademark. We went through the proper channels and paid the fees.”
The Popcorn Factory is asking for $100,000 in damages per domain name of which there are three (lovepeacepopcorn.com, peacelovepopcorn.com and peavelovepopcorn.net) and that Paparella destroy all advertising, promotional materials and anything else that resembles peace, love or popcorn. According to the suit, Paparella planned to develop additional retail popcorn stores based on the original store.
Attorneys for both popcorn companies did not return calls for comment Thursday. A spokeswoman for The Popcorn Factory did not return a call.
jwernau@tribune.com
Although a company can have trademark rights based on mass market usage alone (as The Popcorn Company appears to be claiming), the Paparella’s went through the full process of trademarking the phrase as a name, & opening & developing a store around it. So, seems to me that the best solution would be for Paparella to cut The Popcorn Company in for a partnership percentage, thereby creating a potential win / win for both sides.
Can the plaintiff show damages? Can they show the court the hundreds of tearful consumers complaining “I thought I was buying the ‘Love Peace Popcorn’ and I was duped into buying ‘Peace Love Popcorn’” or whatever? Sheesh!
And if I were the judge I’d ask why they didn’t try to resolve an innocent similarity with a letter or phonecall before such a heavy-handed and potentially ruinous legal action. Double-butter sheesh!
The Popcorn Factory is completely in the right here. The Paparellas should have been smart enough to do a quick internet search before starting a business–anyone with common sense would! It doesn’t matter if they did build a store and use the name, they did so as a direct trademark violation of the original. While you might feel sorry for them, they certainly do not have a leg to stand on. There isn’t even any doubt that this is an incredibly obvious copy of the original. It’s not like they are only slightly similar–they are pretty much the exact same thing. When I was a small business owner, someone “borrowed” my trademarked name and you bet I went after them, (and won.) It doesn’t matter which company is big or small here; it only matters who was first. The Paparellas should be ashamed for being too stupid to do a search first!
Interesting to see if a cease and desist letter was ever sent, although not required. It looks like Popcorn Factory’s logo was not registered either with the USPTO or the Illinois Secretary of state so it might not have showed up in a trademark search. If it had been registered, the USPTO trademark examiner would have used it as grounds for rejection. Trademark rights are based on who used the mark first as a source identifier (and in commerce for federal purposes) not whether a party was first to register. Based on this story, it seems like some sort of agreement between the parties should have tried to have been worked out instead of running right to court and costing everyone lots of money.
It seems to me that since both were launched at about the same time, I would basically issue a summary judgment against the Popcorn Factory for not registering and trademarking their logo first. Besides, it isn’t their primary logo. All they offer is a 2-gallon tin, a bear with the peace sign, and a mixture of goodies including popcorn. If I had the decision, I would force Popcorn Factory to pay all court costs including lawyers, and advise them that they needed to work out their differences before suing.
What interests me is that no where in this article does it say the Popcorn Factory had their logo even trademarked. I would think if they were a big corporation they would have their beloved logo trademarked and if not then that’s on them for not trademarking it. I can understand some business owners of having their idea stolen because they were first. But the fact is if you have a very unique idea for a logo or anything for that matter get it trademarked. I don’t sympathize with with anyone when they say “I had that idea first, but I didn’t trademark it because I was first and no one else had the idea” that’s just plain stupidity at it’s finest.