Lifestyle
Meghan Markle’s lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard suffers another major blow ahead of product launch
Meghan Markle’s latest trademark application was denied last week, DailyMail.com can reveal, in a new major blow to her embattled American Riviera Orchard home goods brand.
The Duchess of Sussex’s attempt to trademark her small-batch jams and other household goods has landed her in another sticky situation with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), after previous bungles and failures to secure rights over her podcast brand, Archewell, last year.
On August 31 the Patent Office denied her application, saying that businesses are not allowed to trademark geographic locations, including the nickname of the coastline around the Sussexes’ Santa Barbara, California, home: ‘the American Riviera’.
The refusal also included a slew of problems with her filing – including her apparent failure to sign the correct documents.
The USPTO admonished the Duchess for giving vague descriptions of her products that could fit into multiple trademark categories.
The office said her brand’s proposed ‘cocktail napkins’ could be paper or textile – two different categories – and her ‘cooking utensils’ could be manual or electric.
The refusal even included a screenshot of another Santa Barbara business’s product already using the term ‘American Riviera’.
The screenshot showed that the site sbcoastalcandles.com sells an ‘American Riviera’ candle for $34.95.
‘Registration is refused because the applied-for mark is primarily geographically descriptive,’ the Office said in its Saturday filing.
‘Commonly used nicknames for geographic locations are generally treated as equivalent to the proper geographic name of the place identified.
‘American Riviera is a common nickname for Santa Barbara, California.’
The decision could throw a wrench in the works for the launch of Markle’s embattled brand, which was reportedly scheduled to go live by the end of the year.
According to her trademark filings, Meghan, 43, plans to sell tableware, drinkware, decanters, kitchen linens and pantry goods including jellies, jams, marmalade and spreads.
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