Crayola Trademarks the Smell of Its Crayons (financialpost.com) 52
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Post: You may find yourself smelling crayons in the aisles of stores soon -- if Crayola's chief executive Pete Ruggiero has his way. In July, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a trademark to the arts and crafts giant for the smell of its crayons -- that waxy scent of a childhood spent trying to color within the lines. While it's too soon for this back-to-school season, Ruggiero imagines one day pumping it through the aisles of retailers, triggering nostalgia while shoppers are browsing and hopefully buying more crayons.
Crayola, a unit of Hallmark, first applied for the trademark in 2018 and was initially turned down less than a year later, but won its bid on appeal. During the process, the company shared examples of its own crayons as well as competitors to verify the distinctiveness. It's a "slightly earthy soap with pungent, leather-like clay undertones," according to the trademark documents. "We've been talking about doing it for years," Ruggiero said about the trademark. "That Crayola smell, there's a connection between the smell and childhood memories that is very powerful."
Crayola, a unit of Hallmark, first applied for the trademark in 2018 and was initially turned down less than a year later, but won its bid on appeal. During the process, the company shared examples of its own crayons as well as competitors to verify the distinctiveness. It's a "slightly earthy soap with pungent, leather-like clay undertones," according to the trademark documents. "We've been talking about doing it for years," Ruggiero said about the trademark. "That Crayola smell, there's a connection between the smell and childhood memories that is very powerful."
Frivolous and wildly subjective. (Score:2)
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Human smell is too weak to build much of a language on, let alone prove ownership. Might as well argue a copyright case by the emotions a song inspires.
Too weak my ass.
I’ve YET to find anyone questioning if that was a fart or not. 100% positive identification with zero false positives.
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Penalize the PTO employees who approved it.
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And none of that matters if the Patent examiners refuse to approve ridiculous applications. It's not a new issue.
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Re:Frivolous and wildly subjective. (Score:5, Interesting)
When a company does this kind of bullshit, they should lose all their trademarks.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the trademark part. What does bother me is this:
"Ruggiero imagines one day pumping it through the aisles of retailers, triggering nostalgia while shoppers are browsing and hopefully buying more crayons."
Fuck you, Crayola. You just burned the genuine nostalgia I had. You made a good product that I enjoyed using as a kid. I've bought some as an adult (got to fill in those numbers on some RPG dice!) and it was kind of no-brainer to buy Crayola because I knew what to expect for product quality.
But you think polluting the air I breathe at a store to literally manipulate me into more purchases does anything more than make me resent you? Wrong. Invasive advertising and subconscious/psychological warfare are evil. Making air have molecules in it that aren't necessary is - to me - a form of assault.
To recap... fuck you, Crayola.
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"Ruggiero imagines one day pumping it through the aisles of retailers, triggering nostalgia while shoppers are browsing and hopefully buying more crayons."
This sort of advertising, especially, is a cancer on our society and the entire human condition. It's trading down human experiences and interactions (like friendly smiles, etc) for profit until they no longer have value and positive meaning to people. The obvious long-term outcome of this is a worse world and the people pushing it must know that it is unambiguously evil.
Re:Frivolous and wildly subjective. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nonsense anyway. The "unique" smell of crayola crayons is just the scent of crayons in general. The actual main component of the smell is from stearic acid or stearates like calcium stearate. Those are present in lots of things. How exactly is anyone supposed to produce any product containing stearates without violating this ridiculous trademark. This is not a perfume or something like that where the smell is intentional.
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How exactly is anyone supposed to produce any product containing stearates without violating this ridiculous trademark.
Trademarks apply only to the specific class of products they're registered for, so as long as you're not producing a crayon, you're free to make it smell exactly like Crayola crayons. (And according to the article summary, the company demonstrated that different brands of crayons indeed have distinct smells, so even if you want to produce crayons, it's certainly at least possible to make them smell like something other than Crayola's version.)
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BMW will need to license this smell from Crayola! (Score:1)
How about its taste? (Score:5, Funny)
I hope not, they're delicious. Yummmy.
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Feh. Paste is better!
Its about crayons for MREs (Score:3)
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The fear is that the trademark will somehow interfere with the adoption of crayons in MREs.
The red ones are the best, spicy!
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The fear is that the trademark will somehow interfere with the adoption of crayons in MREs.
The red ones are the best, spicy!
Personally I'd go with the electric lime to fight off the scurvy.
Um (Score:2)
Re:Um (Score:5, Interesting)
For kids? Really? (Score:2)
”slightly earthy soap with pungent, leather-like clay undertones,"
First off, seriously Crayola? I’ve seen hundred-year old cigar makers be less pretentious.
Somehow I highly doubt the toddler demographic is that picky with which leather-like clay undertones they prefer when trying to stay inside the lines.
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They're probably doing this as an end-run around the fact you can't copyright/trademark a recipe. So anyone could copy their formula if they wanted. But the same ingredients mixed together would smell the same. They're probably not adding fragrance.
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So all someone has to do is substitute one ingredient that smells different but is otherwise similar, or a tiny bit of fragrance? That's not much of an impediment. In fact, crayons that smell like a real world object of the same color sounds like it has potential, at least for smaller boxes like 8 crayons.
Re: For kids? Really? (Score:2)
A great disturbance ... (Score:2)
I highly doubt the toddler demographic ...
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as a million Lance Corporals suddenly cried out in laughter.
No (Score:1)
This will be thrown out the moment it reaches a federal court of competent jurisdiction. Trademark law is written to protect customers so they can be confident knowing the source of a particular product or service.
Trademark protection extends to words, phrases, slogans, symbols, designs, logos, iconography and even characters, provided they are distinctive enough to be recognizable by image alone.
Trademarks do not protect that which is covered by other intellectual property laws. A scent is the by-product o
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15 U.S.C. 1127 :
The term "trademark" includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof--
There is no such thing as a sensory trademark.
Now we'll see if you're grown-up enough to admit you're wrong.
Your claims of being a writer of fiction, are credible.
I would hope so. I also happen to be an expert in intellectual property law since I've been working in merchandising and licensing for the last 25 years.
P.S. The comma is superfluous in your second sentence. I have an English degree too. You have a real nice day now.
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The Lanham Act was passed 78 years ago. Public policy on trademarks has been very steadily enforced ever since.
The comma was deliberate.
And wrong.
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15 U.S.C. 1127 :
The term "trademark" includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof--
There is no such thing as a sensory trademark.
Yet, there are trademarked scents in the US already [mentalfloss.com].
Trademarking Wax Smell? (Score:4, Funny)
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And what about my chromium dioxide (Score:2)
Tapes from the '70s? Will I have to pay every time I take a sniff?
When corporations become monsters. (Score:2)
This would be like GoodYear trademarking the smell of rubber.
Printed money has a distinct smell too, but you don't see the US government trying to - sorry everyone now I'm giving the dumbasses ideas. I'll see myself out.
Copyright (Score:2)
Odors are notoriously difficult to classify in any detailed way, so anything that smells like a crayon will come under attack by Crayola's flying monkey lawyers.
Re:Copyright^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HTrademark (Score:2)
Odors are notoriously difficult to classify in any detailed way
Hasbro has already trademarked the smell of Play-Doh [hasbro.com]. Nothing new here really.
come under attack by Crayola's flying monkey lawyers
Copyright on The Wizard of Oz and its characters is apparently complicated [wikipedia.org], so though they can trademark the scent, flying monkeys might not happpen.
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Dang! I would have thought that Play-Doh would have trademarked the taste of their product before the smell.
Two can play at that game (Score:2)
I hereby trademark the distinctive scent of bullsh*t. Anyone, especially politicians, can license the scent for a nominal service fee.
Killed the Zubbles Guy (Score:2)
TM (Score:2)
How DO you put that little TM symbol on an odor, anyway?
Allergies (Score:2)
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These smell the same as any other crayon. There is no distinct smell or odour.
That is incourrect [hip2save.com], oh foureign one. The story is about trademarks registered with the USPTO, so of course it's only in America.
They described my farts (Score:2)
Re: Crayola Trademarks the Smell of Its Crayons (Score:2)