Meghan Markle has suffered one other setback in her efforts to acquire a trademark for her planned food and lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard.
Harry and David, the famous 90-year-old gift basket maker, have filed a “protest” with the US Patent and Trademark Office, the Daily Mail reported.
The $2.2 billion company claims that the name “American Riviera Orchard” is just too much like “Royal Riviera,” the trademark given to brothers Harry and David Rosenberg the premium pears They began raising in 1914 of their father's 200-acre orchard in Oregon's Rogue River Valley. Twenty years later, the brothers began their mail-order gift business, selling their gold foil-wrapped Royal Riviera pears, which have turn out to be popular holiday treats over the a long time.
Harry and David's protest against Meghan's planned trademark “American Riviera Orchard” has been deemed “relevant” on account of “likelihood of confusion” and has been referred to the trademark office's reviewing attorney, the Daily Mail said.
This move by Harry and David appears to lend credence to recent comments from Tina Brown, Princess Diana's biographer and former editor of Vanity Fair and New Yorker. Brown criticized Meghan for selling Prince Harry on the concept she was a “savvy Hollywood wheeler-dealer” who would make them stars and really wealthy after her exit from royal life in 2020 Founded media and charity empire. Instead, Meghan has proven her lack of business acumen, is burdened with bad ideas, has “the worst judgment in the world” and a talent for “doing everything wrong,” Brown said.
“Her problem is that she doesn’t listen,” Brown said in an interview with The Ankler podcast. “She has all these people, asks them their opinion and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do. And unfortunately all of their ideas are total crap.”
According to the Daily Mail, Meghan's try and launch a way of life brand has proven to be an ongoing saga, because the Duchess of Sussex has faced recurring issues with the trademark office.
A yr ago, Meghan tried to secure a brand for The Tig, the life-style blog she began as a TV actress on the series “Suits” before she began dating Harry. However, the Daily Mail reported that this trademark bid was stalled because she didn’t submit a “statement of use” together with her application, forcing her lawyer to hunt a six-month extension.
American Riviera Orchard was similarly hit last month when the trademark office told her that “American Riviera” was too vague a term and told her she had three months to offer clarifications and $700 to file her application to proceed.
It seems that American Riviera Orchard's launch can have been premature and reasonably convoluted. This was recently revealed by Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden that he got wind in March that Meghan was starting a way of life brand. Before publishing a story, Eden said he reached out to her office for comment.
Eden believes Meghan was “desperate” to stop news about her lifestyle brand from appearing within the Daily Mail because she and Harry “despise” the tabloid and Harry has launched a legal battle against its owner. “But that hate can lead them to make stupid decisions,” Eden wrote.
To snag the Daily Mail, Meghan pulled the trigger on her launch on the American Riviera Orchard and shared links to an Instagram page and website. She also had her celebrity friends promote jars of strawberry jam and dog biscuits that bore the label.
However, this reportedly happened before Meghan could actually sell products or recruit executives to run the corporate. In an in depth report by Puck, she also faced suggestions that her idea for American Riviera Orchard was heavily “inspired” – or more so – by one other Southern California-based company, the “decadent lifestyle outfitting company” Flamingo Estate .
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