Duane Morris Demand Letter Makes Mom & Pop Shop's Day; 'Fudgesicle' Now Known as Trademark Bar
Owners of a small ice cream shop in California were surprised and pleased to receive a cease-and-desist letter from Duane Morris recently, threatening legal action over an item on the Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous menu known as the fudgesicle, reports SF Weekly in its SFoodie blog.
“Our first reaction was ‘That’s rad! They know about us!’ ” says Anabelle Topacio, who owns the San Francisco Bay area shop with Ian Flores. “It was just a bar hidden amongst other items on the menu in our rinky-dink store.”
The words fudgesicle and fudgsicle are owned by Unilever, the international law firm pointed out in its letter demanding that the store instead use generic terms such as “fudge pop” or “fudge bar.”
In response, Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous sent a handwritten note to Duane Morris assuring Unilever they had complied with the demand. They have renamed the offending product the Trademark Bar, the blog post notes.
