Fortune reports..
“Trademark abandonment is a new kind of industry. It’s a new kind of gold rush,” says Jeff Kaplan, whose company Retrobrands filed applications for all three marks. His operation acquires trademarks for brands that companies have let lapse—Chipwich and Victrola are part of his portfolio—and either licenses the names or manufactures the revamped products himself.
But giving a second life to brands rooted in racist stereotypes—ones that big companies have deemed too problematic to maintain—is a vastly different proposition from reviving those that capitalize on innocent nostalgia. Kaplan feels that brands like Aunt Jemima have been sufficiently updated and still have big markets, which include Black customers who he says agree that the brands are no longer derogatory.
Sonia Katyal, a professor at UC-Berkeley School of Law who specializes in the intersection of intellectual property and civil rights, says that obtaining the trademarks will be an uphill battle for the likes of Kaplan. And that’s just the legal hurdle. There’s also the social cost of resurrecting brands with painful histories, she says.
“Big companies are feeling the public pressure,” she says, “but these smaller individuals don’t seem to care so much.”
Read the full article. https://fortune.com/2020/12/08/aunt-jemima-uncle-bens-eskimo-pie-brands-racist-roots-revived-black-lives-matter-movement-trademarks/
