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Buffett’s Dairy Queen loses lawsuit over ‘Blizzard’ name

NEW YORK — A federal judge ruled that Dairy Queen cannot stop W.B. Mason Co. from selling “Blizzard” bottled spring water, the same name the unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. uses for a popular ice cream product.

In a 217-page decision made public on Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson found a lack of evidence that consumers were confused by the Blizzards or that W.B. Mason, an office products distributor, intended to confuse anyone.

Dairy Queen began using the Blizzard name in 1946 and has five Blizzard trademarks.

While acknowledging that W.B. Mason, which has two trademarks for Blizzard copy paper, was not a competitor, Dairy Queen said consumers might be confused because its U.S. restaurants sell bottled water.

But the judge said the products had “very different audience appeal,” and co-existed for 11 years despite evidence that Dairy Queen’s Blizzard had achieved “iconic” status, with U.S. sales reaching $1.1 billion in 2020.

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“Dairy Queen introduced no evidence of an actual association between the two products,” Nelson wrote. “If association were to occur, in all likelihood, it would have occurred by now.”

The St. Paul, Minnesota-based judge ruled after a 12-day non-jury trial with 30 witnesses last fall. Her decision is dated June 10 but was sealed for one week. The lawsuit began in March 2018.

Dairy Queen said consumers might be confused because its U.S. restaurants sell bottled water.

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 1:01 am Mmmm... Blizzards.

Dairy Queen's headquarters are in my suburb of Minneapolis and you can't throw a stone without hitting one of their restaurants. According to the internet, there are 233 DQ restaurants in Minnesota. DQs just a thing you grow up with around here. I'm also a big fan of A&W drive-ins. They are the epitome of summertime for me.

keith wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 1:27 am

MN-Skeptic wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 1:01 am Mmmm... Blizzards.

Dairy Queen's headquarters are in my suburb of Minneapolis and you can't throw a stone without hitting one of their restaurants. According to the internet, there are 233 DQ restaurants in Minnesota. DQs just a thing you grow up with around here. I'm also a big fan of A&W drive-ins. They are the epitome of summertime for me.

A&W is tolerable. Their root beer is drinkable, but vastly inferior to Hires, which is why A&W bought them out and killed it off.

sugar magnolia wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 10:32 am Barq's or nothing.

Twitter Successfully Quashes Sketchy Copyright Subpoena Over Billionaire’s Critic On Twitter

You may recall that, last fall, we wrote about a truly bizarre legal fight, in which a little-followed pseudonymous Twitter account @CallMeMoneyBags had tweeted out some images of a woman, suggesting a few times that the woman was the mistress of billionaire Brian Sheth. The account put out lots of tweets generally mocking people in the private equity space, including Sheth. Sometime after the tweets including those photos, Twitter received a DMCA subpoena from a company called Bayside Advisory, which had basically no presence online, claiming it held the copyrights in those photos and demanding identifying information on Money Bags.

The most obvious assumption was that Bayside was connected to Sheth and this was a way of finding out who this anonymous critic was. Twitter stepped in to the case to seek to quash the subpoena, noting that this did appear to be an attack on the right to anonymity — and also noting that this was an obvious fair use of the images. Bayside insists that it’s not connected at all to Sheth, but there’s a lot that’s sketchy about the organization (more on that shortly). The magistrate judge in the case first said that it couldn’t determine the fair use issue without hearing from Money Bags, and ordered Twitter to alert the user to show up in court. The Money Bags account appears to have been totally abandoned from about the date of the original subpoena, and it’s unclear if Twitter was able to contact the user, but the user didn’t show up in court at all, leading the court to order Twitter to reveal the information to Bayside.

Twitter, correctly, asked the court to reconsider, and the issue was handed over to district court judge Vince Chhabria, who held a hearing last month (which I viewed). It became clear quite quickly that Chhabria fully understood the issues at play here: he kept demanding that Bayside’s lawyer explain how any of this made sense, and even tried to find out if Bayside was abusing judicial process for the sake of harassing a critic of Sheth’s. Indeed, at one point, the judge demanded that Bayside’s lawyer explain who he spoke to at Bayside, and the lawyer tried not to answer before first only giving a last name, and then finally revealing a full name (Bert Kauffman).

Tiredretiredlawyer wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 5:38 pm I almost went down the rabbit hole of being a root beer connoisseur. For about two years I tried different root beers. Barq's , Frost Top and A & W topped the list. There are many craft root beers just like craft beers. It's fun and interesting.

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 6:43 pm I think it’s for only merchandizing. It doesn’t mean the Ohio State University owns “The” for all purposes. So, for example, if The University of Tennessee decided to sell orange t-shirts or ball caps solely with the word “The” emblazoned on them, they’d be in violation. But they can still market stuff that says “The University of Tennessee.”

W. Kevin Vicklund wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 8:05 pm

Maybenaut wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 6:43 pm I think it’s for only merchandizing. It doesn’t mean the Ohio State University owns “The” for all purposes. So, for example, if The University of Tennessee decided to sell orange t-shirts or ball caps solely with the word “The” emblazoned on them, they’d be in violation. But they can still market stuff that says “The University of Tennessee.”

I could easily be wrong, but I would think your second example as-is would be a violation of trademark*, since it is 1) competitive with that college to the south, and 2) used in the manner the trademark is used. However, one could have "The University of Tennessee is #1" without it being a violation, since "The" is being used informationally. Trademark law is complex, and it's easy to lose a trademark if you aren't diligent.

*However, it may be that "THE" is what is trademarked, and use of "The" doesn't violate the mark.

branded products such as t-shirts and caps that only feature the single word.

KickahaOta wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:24 pm I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice. May cause drowsiness; alcohol may intensify this effect.

This seems like a case where it's crucial to remember that the core of trademark law is consumer confusion. Without consumer confusion -- for example, confusion about the source of goods or services, or confusion about whether the holder of the trademark has authorized the use of the mark -- then there's no trademark violation. For example, this is why, when Pepsico puts out advertisements that claim that Pepsi is better than Coke, the ads can mention the Coke and Coca-Cola names, and even show Coke cans and delivery trucks. Nobody seeing the ad is going to be confused into thinking that Pepsico is the maker of Coke or that the Coca-cola Company is the maker of Pepsi; and nobody is going to think that the ad is coming from the Coca-cola Company rather than Pepsico.

The hypothetical "The University of Tennessee" shirt would create absolutely no consumer confusion. Nobody is going to think that a "The University of Tennessee" shirt is associated in any way with Ohio State University.

Diego Maradona: eight to go on trial in Argentina for homicide
Defendants named in judge’s report include football star’s three doctors, a psychiatrist and two nurses

Eight people who took care of the Argentinian football superstar Diego Maradona will be tried for homicide, according to a ruling released on Wednesday following an investigation into his death from cardiac arrest.

In the 236-page document seen by Reuters, the judge in charge of the case questioned “the behaviours – active or by omission – of each of the accused which led to and contributed to the realisation of the harmful result”.

The ruling said eight people including doctors, nurses and a psychologist who cared for Maradona at the time of his death in 2020 are accused of “simple homicide,” a serious charge that means taking a life with intent. A medical board appointed to investigate Maradona’s death concluded in 2021 that his medical team acted in an “inappropriate, deficient and reckless manner”.

Maradona was considered one of the greatest football players in history, though the diminutive player nicknamed “Pelusa” for his long mane of hair and “D10S” as a play on the Spanish word for “God” using the number on his shirt, battled drug and alcohol abuse for years.