A recent article in the the New York Law Journal caught my attention for an interesting development in examination of eco-mark applications in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We’ve known for some time that marks containing terms such as “green,” “clean,” “eco-” or “enviro-” are very likely to be rejected as merely descriptive of environmentally friendly products or services.
In “Changing Climate for ‘Green’ Trademarks,” Robert Scheinfeld of the Baker Botts firm notes that the USPTO has very recently begun to reject eco-marks on the basis of deceptiveness.
This is almost the opposite of a descriptiveness rejection: where a descriptive eco-mark immediately communicates to consumers the environmentally friendly nature of the goods or services, a deceptive eco-mark is one that signals environmentally friendly characteristics while the goods or services do not actually confer an environmental benefit.
The piece cites a 2013 decision by the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Board) as a case in point. In re Kitaru Innovations Inc. involved an application to register the mark GREEN SEAL (shown above) for adhesive tape and tape dispensers.
The USPTO examining attorney refused registration on the ground that the mark was deceptively misdescriptive under Section 2(e)(1) of the Lanham Act and comprises deceptive matter under Section 2(a) in that it falsely and materially indicates that the applicant’s goods are environmentally friendly when, in fact, they are not. The Board affirmed the refusal.
For deceptive misdescriptiveness under Section 2(e)(1), the Board’s starting point, by now a very familiar one, was that the word “‘green’ directly conveys information to potential consumers that the tape products are environmentally friendly.”
To be misdescriptive, a mark must be merely descriptive of a significant aspect of the goods which they could plausibly possess but in fact do not. The Board concluded that the GREEN SEAL mark could be merely descriptive if the products were, indeed, green:
The two word composite term, “Green Seal,” would be merely descriptive if applicant’s goods were made of eco-friendly materials. Green would convey information about the environmental claims that the tape possessed, and a most important feature of adhesive tape or adhesive packaging tape is that it “seals,” or “tightly or completely closes or secures a thing.”
Interestingly, but immaterial to the Board’s decision, the applicant made no claim that its products are eco-friendly. Rather, the “Green Seal” mark is just one in a line of color-coded adhesive tape products that also includes “Black Seal,” “Blue Seal” and “Double Blue Seal.”
Nevertheless, the Board concluded that many of the affected consumers would be likely to believe that the term “Green” in the GREEN SEAL mark describes the adhesive tapes as being environmentally friendly. The Board noted evidence of record showing that adhesive tape products in particular are increasingly the subject of environmentally friendly claims, and consumers would expect the applicant’s tape to be eco-friendly:
As seen above in the pages of blogs and advertisements from the Internet, an increasingly common feature of adhesive and packaging tape is that it is ecologically sound. Sometimes the focus is on how the tape deteriorates over time, and others times it has to do with the use of recycled materials. The term “Green” is frequently used to capture this idea. Accordingly, consumers encountering applicant’s mark with the term “Green” will likely understand the term in context to refer to the fact that this tape is an environmentally-friendly product.
To be deceptive matter under Section 2(a), the misdescription must be likely to affect the relevant consumers’ decision to purchase the products. Here, the Board noted the “urgency” for consumers to recycle and purchase products made of recycled or biodegradable materials. The evidence of record showed that there is a segment of purchasers that would be more inclined to buy eco-friendly adhesive tape products.
Accordingly, the Board concluded that the perceived green quality of the tape products would be likely to affect the purchasing decisions of relevant consumers:
The level of excitement on the part of consumers reflected above over the availability of environmentally friendly / green tape products demonstrates that this characteristic would be material to the decision of consumers to purchase applicant’s goods. Accordingly, we find on this record that such a misdescription is likely to affect the decision to purchase the goods, and the third and final prong of the Section 2(a) deceptiveness test has also been satisfied.
This is the first decision I’ve seen where an eco-mark was refused registration by the USPTO for being deceptively misdescriptive and/or deceptive matter. It’s unclear whether or not this is actually a trend. I plan to conduct some research on this topic and discuss my findings in this space.
What is clear, though, is that the USPTO has made an initial foray into the subject of greenwashing and has at least begun to use deceptive misdescriptiveness and deceptive matter as tools for combating the problem.
