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Businesses The Courts Idle

Caterpillar Takes Tiny 'Cat & Cloud' Coffee Shop To Court Over Trademark (fastcompany.com) 140

Posted by EditorDavid from the wars-of-words dept.
"Caterpillar Inc. is trying to stop a tiny cafe from using the word cat," reports Fast Company.

Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: Caterpillar wishes to cancels the coffee shop's trademark claiming that the trademark on shop's apparel and footwear is too similar to theirs and would cause confusion for consumers. For reference, the coffee shop's t-shirts and merchandise feature a cat and a cloud. This is not the first time Caterpillar has made dubious trademark claims on "Cat" or "Caterpillar".
"Another small business faces a crazy legal challenge from a big company that should know better..." writes Inc. "There are literally hundreds of trademarks listed that include the word cat and that are intended for clothing. Without having a trademark or license, technically Cat & Cloud wouldn't be able to sell that merchandise without permission (whether from Caterpillar or one of the many other companies with cat-related trademarks for clothing)."

The coffee shop responded by setting up a GoFundMe campaign (which is now "trending" and has so far raised $12,482) for their legal defense.

They're arguing that Caterpillar's efforts "would effectively set the precedent for them to OWN the word 'cat', making it un-useable by any business in the US."
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Caterpillar Takes Tiny 'Cat & Cloud' Coffee Shop To Court Over Trademark More

Caterpillar Takes Tiny 'Cat & Cloud' Coffee Shop To Court Over Trademark

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  • Quick some one copyright dog and cash in! (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Saturday June 15, 2019 @11:42AM (#58767482)

    Quick some one copyright dog and cash in!

    • This is not about copyright, it's about a trademark. You can't copyright a word, or even a book title. Yes, you too can write a book called A Tale of Two Cities, and it's perfectly legal.

      Trademarks, however, are names used to conduct business.

      Still, Microsoft was not allowed to trademark "Windows" because the word is too common. Sorry, Caterpillar, you don't have a claim here, and I hope you lose in court.

  • they do know better (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Saturday June 15, 2019 @11:43AM (#58767490) Homepage Journal

    The attack small companies that can't afford a defense in order to set precedents they use to attack big ones to force settlements. It is the same as how dubious patent trolls worked - hit a small piece of software with blackmail, so that eventually they can use it to take out millions from a huge company.

    • Re:they do know better (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday June 15, 2019 @01:04PM (#58767810) Homepage Journal

      As much as I despite Caterpillar, this smells more like corporate lawyers trying to justify their retainer. If they don't threaten a few people every year the bosses might wonder why they are paying them. If there is no-one infringing their trademarks they have to find someone who isn't but can't defend themselves against the claim anyway.

      • Your claim to trademark is stronger if you show that you have taken steps to protect it. So they need to have a lawsuit every now and again, even if it is frivolous.

        • Re:they do know better (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15, 2019 @04:02PM (#58768584)

          That is a sign that trademark law is broken. Companies that file frivolous lawsuits to strengthen trademark claims should face serious financial penalties. The corporate lawyers that initiate such actions should be disbarred.

    • The attack small companies that can't afford a defense in order to set precedents they use to attack big ones to force settlements. It is the same as how dubious patent trolls worked - hit a small piece of software with blackmail, so that eventually they can use it to take out millions from a huge company.

      Actually, we don't know because the linked articles don't show any image of the Cat and Cloud logo. It's possible that their logo is so similar to the Caterpillar logo that consumers may mistake it for a Caterpillar product.

      Remember, while most IP protections are for the owner fo the IP, trademark is different - it's to protect the consumer from mistaking one brand for another.

      I find it very suspicious that no one is posting the two logos side by side so that we can see how closely they match; they just

      • Re:they do know better (Score:5, Informative)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday June 15, 2019 @04:22PM (#58768674) Journal
        Logo is visible here [catandcloud.com]. Caterpiller is not suing them, they asked the trademark office to remove the Cat&Cloud trademark for "cat" for selling apparel only. Apparently Cat sells clothing [google.com], and they have a trademark for it.

        I have no comment as to the ethics here.

    • The attack small companies that can't afford a defense in order to set precedents

      Not quite. You see suing a small company typically leads to settlements, and settlements do NOT set precedents. The reality is that some lawyer shotgunned out trademark claims and something irrelevant got caught in the crossfire. If they wanted to set precedents they'd need to take it to court. At court it would instantly be struck down as frivolous since trademark claims rarely transcend industries, and unless people get a free D9 with every coffee sold, I doubt that anyone legitimately thinks Catapillar h

  • We all know how caterpillar rolls.

  • Dear Caterpillar, Cats and Caterpillars are different creatures and D10s don't meow - they crawl. Don't be trolls - the Internet will throw you under the bus.

  • Donated, patent and trademark trolls need to be stopped

  • like the Apple computer and Apple Recods (the record company the Beatles were using)

    and they settled saying: we promise to not sell music if you promise to not sell computers, looks like Apple computers broke that promise (itunes)

  • In none of the links in the summary, nor the video at the link, could I see the logo to judge how close it really was to the caterpillar logo.

    Is it really so hard to get images of both logos and show them side by side?

    I gave up, if you can find them I salute you.

    • Cat and Cloud:
      https://catandcloud.com/

      Caterpillar
      https://www.cat.com/en_US/copyright.html

      JustAnotherOldGuy put it better than I ever could:
      "Oh come on- they're almost exactly alike except for the color, font, shape, size, symbols, text, design, pattern, product, format, style, and overall look."
  • ... if I'd ever heard of them.

    • Good to know some people still live under rocks. Caterpillar makes equipment to move them.

      Caterpillar is #58 of the Fortune 500. Just after Facebook and ahead of Pfizer, Goldman Sachs, Cisco Systems, American Express, and Best Buy.

  • I went to buy one (Score:5, Funny)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Saturday June 15, 2019 @01:02PM (#58767802) Journal

    I went to buy a Caterpillar 320D L Hydraulic Excavator (~$230,000) and somehow ended up with a $20 T-shirt.

    Clearly the market will have trouble differentiating the two.

  • Will they also go after Tiger Woods?

    (When will /. move into the 21st century and allow picture posting?)

    http://www.humoar.com/wp-conte... [humoar.com]
  • Caterpillar is a common word and as such, if I understand trademarks correctly is not eligible for trademark protection.

    It's rather like the Lindows/Windows dispute which, IIRC, was settle pretty quickly after the judge raised the issue of whether "Windows" was eligible for trademark protection.

    I'd donate to a crowd funding page dedicated to canceling the "Caterpiller" trademark.
    • Not necessarily. Another company making construction equipment cannot name themselves Caterpillar, Inc for example. Caterpillar's specific trademarks they have shown include their "CAT" logo which a mountain rising under the "A" and other variations of "CAT". It is on this basis they are probably suing; I don't think they have a case though.

  • honk if Caterpillar shares the road (Score:4, Interesting)

    by epine ( 68316 ) on Saturday June 15, 2019 @02:10PM (#58768058)

    I can't track down this story now, but I heard it on the radio (probably the CBC) in the run up to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics: that there was a performance-oriented bicycle shop in the Seattle area named "Olympic Bicycles" or some such, and the owner was getting his pants sued off by the glamorous Olympic rings.

    I can see the Olympic mountains on a clear day, and I once cycled around their remote side, amid a steady trickle of logging trucks and RVs (the logging trucks use exactly as much space as they require, neither an inch more or less, but the RVs are another story ...) It's a long time ago now, but at some point, coming out of Forks, there's a large, long, sweeping descent into the valley below. Glorious. It was my first big tour, and we weren't exactly lightly loaded (affordable gear in the 1980s was not exactly space age), so it was a long, hard grind to get to the top of the preceding summit.

    Logging trucks mean grit. Lots of grit. All of which accumulates in the unused shoulder lane outside the white line. So for the first and only time on the entire three week trip, as I broke the 50 km/h barrier for the first and only time on my heavily loaded bike—rounding a long sweeping curve—I pulled a few feet into the traffic lane inside the white line, to get out of the micro-marbles (it hadn't rained for weeks, and didn't for the entire month of June in that year, which is early for the summer drought in the Pacific Northwest).

    Within 15 s, some asshole behind me was honking his horn to remind me of my lowly place in the American autobahn hierarchy. This was one of those situations where it was six hours up, five minutes down. My immediate response was: fuck you all to hell, I earned this. My only other choice was to hammer the breaks, cut my speed in half, and head back out into the grit while the asshole behind scratched his momentary asshole itch. 30 mph for four minutes is about two miles. Google maps has the loop from Port Angeles to Aberdeen (on the backside) at 15.5 hours by bicycle, 170 miles total, 5000 ft up / 5000 ft down. The entire portion of my trip where I slowed down a single other vehicle by occupying the main lane was 2 miles / 4 minutes. Very few RVs on the same route could claim the same.

    Perhaps the guy behind me honking at my brief use of HIS resource is now higher management at Caterpillar, because he never wasted a precious minute of his precious life in sharing the road with anyone else at all.

    Here's the second point: I wonder why a small, enthusiast bicycle shop based out of Tacoma or Olympia or Seattle—in the very backyard of the Olympic Mountains and this majestic vista along the San Juan straights—would brand itself Olympic Cycles? What could possibly have gotten into their addled minds?

    When I heard that this tiny bike shop had been sent a cease and desist by the IOC's thug division, and had effectively already rolled over without even trying to fight this, I completely lost it. Maybe I was still roiling over that asshole behind me, honking to pass of the big, swooping descent. (After spending much of five hours grinding away in your 1:1 granny gear, anything north of 30 mph exhilarates like warp factor six.)

    The upshot is that I decided to fight back, and vote with my eyeballs. I have not watched a single minute of live Olympic coverage since 2010 that wasn't on a TV in some sports bar with the audio muted. This includes the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and every Olympics since. I've probably watched the Usain Bolt highlight real on YouTube, and a few select highlight reels in swimming and rowing over the past few years. That's 100% of my Olympic diet. Baring Alzheimer's, I will never watch another minute of live IOC coverage for the rest of my natural days.

    If ever my resolution falters, I know I just need to imagine that the IOC consists of 50 assholes honking to pass, like that guy behind me in the early 1980s, and my temptation will be brief indeed.

    Here's

    • The IOC lawyers worked overtime that year, because approximately every third business in Seattle has been named "Olympic..." after the mountain range, forever. But relax. The Olympic Committee lost.

  • Click through some links, tell NoScript to allow some sites to operate, and you'll see the 'Cat & Cloud' coffeeshop logo -- and it's not in any way, shape, or form, even remotely like the Caterpillar trademarked logo.
    What the actual fuck, Caterpillar? Did they screw up your CEOs' latte order or something and he's throwing a temper-tantrum over it now?
    Of course the Streisand Effect will come into play: this'll get thrown out of court, and that small chain of coffeeshops will blow up in the media and 5
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Other things too, but AFAIK, a big part of trademark is supposed to be about confusion. Look at these guys. [catandcloud.com]. If anybody comes in there looking for earth-moving equipment, they're being confused by the abundant "clouds" in Santa Cruz, not the trademark.

    I hope the judge not only throws the case out, but hits Caterpillar with the shop's legal costs and whatever penalty there is for wasting the court's time. Then I hope the shop gets a good lawyer, counter-sues, and gives away a few free cups of coffee with

  • ... does a feline have to do with a larval lepidoptera [wikipedia.org]? There is absolutely no chance of confusing the two. Other than them both being cute and furry.

  • It's for my IT business. You can't trademark just a common word; it has to be a specific representation of words, with any accompanying art. In Caterpillar's case, it's CAT or CATERPILLAR in a specified black bold font, with the A atop a pile of dirt. If you look at Cat and Cloud's logos, they are nothing like Caterpillar's, including the one on a ballcap.

  • Now I don't have to worry about shopping for a backhoe and ending up with a frigging cup of coffee instead.

    Thanks Caterpillar. You da man.

  • Catrkillas Quest que ce

  • The Felis catus that lives with me tells me she owns the trademark.

  • and tell other people that they should use other brands. This is unacceptable.

  • it's not like they called Cat & Pillar...

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