Mail: Duchess Meghan’s American Riviera Orchard has more trademark issues, blah

What’s killing me about royal gossip these days is that there’s fertile ground for some deeper dives on so many of the left-behind Windsors. Why is the Duchess of Edinburgh flying all over the place without any of the royal rota covering it? What’s really going on with King Charles’s cancer treatments? Why was Queen Camilla so f–king rude to her tour hosts? Why isn’t the Princess of Wales wearing her sapphire engagement ring this year? Why did William lose so much weight and why is he insisting on that scuzzy beard? Instead of actually focusing on the royals they pay for, the British media is still bound and determined to scream and cry about, you guessed it, the Duchess of Sussex. Meghan plans to launch her American Riviera Orchard brand later this year or maybe in the new year. You know what means: yet more reporting on trademarks. From the Mail’s Eden Confidential.

The scope of her ambitions appears to know no bounds, as was memorably observed by her friend, Kim Kardashian, who said that Meghan Markle was intent on ‘changing the world’. But are those dreams destined to be for ever foiled? The question is prompted by a development which will dismay fans who yearn to taste the Duchess of Sussex’s jam or any of the other goodies which she envisages offloading to the public via American Riviera Orchard, the ‘lifestyle brand’ which she unveiled in April.

Her bid to trademark the American Riviera Orchard name has run into what might be described as a multi-billion dollar problem. It comes in the uncompromising form of a protest lodged with the United States Patent and Trademark Office by a firm owning the trademark ‘Royal Riviera’.

The owner, Harry & David, is an American institution, founded in 1934, with annual sales of £1.7billion and 3,300 staff. The protest, deemed ‘relevant’ because of ‘likelihood of confusion’, has been referred to Marco Wright, the Trademark Office’s Examining Attorney. It’s the latest bit of bad luck for Meghan, 43.

A year ago, her bid to secure a trademark for her lifestyle blog, The Tig, hit a snag when she failed to submit a ‘statement of use’ with her application, thereby obliging her attorney, Danielle Weiss, to seek a six-month extension.

American Riviera Orchard was similarly afflicted last month when, as I disclosed, the trademark office informed her that ‘American Riviera’ was too vague a term, stipulating that she had three months to provide clarification, as well as paying an additional $700 (£535) to continue her application.

Tina Brown, erstwhile editor of Vanity Fair and author of a dazzling biography of Princess Diana, fears that this isn’t bad luck. Meghan, Brown declared last week, is ‘flawless about getting it all wrong’, adding that ‘all of her ideas are total c**p’. Megs could do worse than checking out Harry & David. Its fortune was established when its founders hand-delivered exquisite comice pears to city businessmen.

[From The Daily Mail]

Again, instead of focusing on the actual gossip stories with the left-behind royals, we’re getting yet another mind-numbingly tedious story about American trademarks. Eden really found the smoking gun this time, didn’t he? People who were on the fence about supporting Meghan have now made up their minds, based solely on a trademark protest in America. What’s even funnier is that Harry & David have a product line called “Royal Riviera” and they’re the ones beefing with a duchess who left the “royal” branding out of her product line.

Photos courtesy of Archewell and Avalon Red.

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29 Responses to “Mail: Duchess Meghan’s American Riviera Orchard has more trademark issues, blah”

  1. swaz says:

    If I was a royal reporter the only royals I would talk about is Meghan and Harry 😍😍 the others have no substance 🤓

  2. girl_ninja says:

    They wouldn’t have a thing to talk about if it weren’t for Meg and Harry. What a bunch of losers.

  3. Izzy says:

    I have never even heard of the “Royal Riviera” line from Harry & David, but I do know that their quality overall is hit-or-miss. Maybe they shouldn’t be so eager to draw attention to themselves.

    • kirk says:

      I’ve been a sporadic Harry & David shopper for years. Have never had a problem with quality for myself; if any gift recipients had problems, they never told me. Website now looks like a disjointed kluge of various branded gift baskets. Had no idea they’d been on such a shopping spree for brand names. Harry & David, who own the brand “Popcorn Factory,” should know about name confusion since they seem guilty of it themselves. That article is horribly written, sentence fragments and all, but I don’t actually check the daily fail.

    • Eurydice says:

      It’s not a line, it’s the registered trademark for Harry & David’s pears. They’ve had that trademark forever. I can see how it could be an issue – “royal,” “Riviera,” “Harry” and a type of fruit – one can never underestimate the public’s ability to get confused.

      • kirk says:

        😂 we are kinda dumb. H&D might be hoping for a promo nudge being briefly associated with H&M, in whatever way. Harry and David began life in Medford, OR, a noted NW pear growing region. That could be changing with climate change though. NW apple growing regions have already shifted.

  4. wolfmamma in says:

    It seems that every time these tired and ridiculous stories come out they are more desperate and petty.
    The RF is going down and the deflection is this nonsense.

    PS Harry and David’s is a ghost of its former glory.

  5. Amy Bee says:

    Shouldn’t Richard Eden be up in arms because Harry and David have a product line that has “royal” in it’s name? Didn’t the Palace and press tell us that only the Royal Family could use the word “royal” hence the reason they took away Harry and Meghan’s instagram page?

  6. wolfmamma in says:

    It seems that every time these tired and ridiculous stories come out they are more desperate and petty.
    The RF is going down and the deflection is this nonsense.

    PS Harry and David’s is a ghost of its former glory.

  7. yipyip says:

    Will they ever stop badgering this woman?
    5 years, 5!

  8. Anonymous says:

    My own personal conspiracy theory* about ARO is that it’s at least 50% just a front. A contrivance to keep the idiot gutter press distracted while M+H get on with their actual work. A shiny bauble that holds the attention of halfwits like Eden and the rest of the RR. My deepest suspicion is that Meghan is currently raking in huge quantities of cash from her carefully curated investment portfolio while these feeble-minded idiots are focussed on jam.

    *Totally made up by me on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

    • Foodie Canuk says:

      Would that just be hilarious trolling on her part?

      **Oh look over here – shiny fake thing – please commence your gossip!**

      Makes a zillion buckaroos doing all the behind the scenes work lol. Im sure we all still want some jam though 🙂

    • kelleybelle says:

      You might have a point here …

    • MsIam says:

      Wouldn’t that be something, if they came out the box with something totally different, name, products, etc. I would laugh my azz off if that happened. Angela Levin would pop her wig and Maureen would just about keel over.

  9. Jais says:

    Lol, eden, trademark stories are boring.

  10. Becks1 says:

    So look, trademark and patent lawyers can make a lot of money because it is really tedious and detail oriented and there can be a LOT of back and forth with the government. I remember someone saying to me in law school – if reading about something gives you a huge headache, know that it can probably make you a lot of money because no one wants that headache. And yes trademark law gave me a huge headache. As did ERISA, lol.

    So basically this seems pretty par for the course for me and I think Meghan is going to be just fine.

  11. Yvonne says:

    Genuine question – is there any rough timeline for when ARO will start selling products?

    Do you think stuff will be available for Christmas or might we need to wait till next year?

  12. Amy says:

    Former trademark lawyer here. When I trademarked my own firm, I had issues with the TTAB as well. It was a . . . .royal . . . pain in the neck. This is not a big deal and is pretty standard. Harry & David should cobrand something with her. That would really get Saltine Island crazy.

  13. Hypocrisy says:

    When Meghan’s product line does launch, I’m going to be giving ARO gifts for every holiday or celebration.. just my way of saying F-you to all of this target harassment by fools who couldn’t survive in a world that isn’t nepotism and class based because they certainly didn’t get their positions because of a high IQ or achievements.

  14. tamsin says:

    How ironic and par for the course if a company with “royal” in its name is the snag- if this is true.

  15. Meredith says:

    I’m obv not a trademark lawyer, but don’t get it—how do things like America’s Test Kitchen and Milk Street get approved for TM but ARO is a problem because of commonly used location names or words.?

    • Ham&Cheese says:

      I would imagine that plenty of trademarks fall under the radar when they do their public notice… but Meghan has an entire country’s public institutions after her, trying to unalive her, her family and destroy her ability to be financially free, so her instagram posts (likely done for the trademark) plus the stalker rota put the company on front pages for everyone to see. The name of the registered company wasn’t even connectable to H or M.

  16. yipyip says:

    Look at the state of the world.
    H&M should be left alone.
    The press, even the gutter press, should be focusing on the Govt. leaders doing their jobs.

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