Thursday, February 19, 2009

Glaceau VitaminWater Boasts of IP Success









Glaceau Vitamin Water has taken the time to write a very interesting piece about the efforts of its in house legal department in order to protect Glaceau's intellectual property rights (trademark rights in particular). The company has a small legal department that is comprised of general corporate counsel Mr. Joseph DiSalvo, associate general counsel Brian Howard, part time IP attorney and a paralegal on staff.
The piece highlights something that seems to be very important in this ever competitive economy: Intellectual property rights are everything right now:

"There's nothing more important to this company than its intellectual property," says general counsel Joseph DiSalvo. "Nothing." This is something that Coca Cola Inc. has to think about (see previous post). Apparently the devotees of sham glam will tell you that IP rights are not necessarily important.

I agree with Mr. DiSalvo. If you look at one of the leading competitors for the vitamin enhanced water sector (SoBe's Life Water which is owned by Pepsi Co), it definitely looks like Glaceau has a reason to litigate for trademark infringement, trade dress, and also trademark dilution. Hence the three different incarnations. The first bottle by SoBe was found to infringe on Glaceau's trademark, the second bottle was too confusing (and still contained contrasting color fonts with the words Life/Water which was too similar to Glaceau's Vitamin Water), and the third is the final incarnation. Can you say sham glam?

You can read the entire article (which I feel sounds like a press release) here:

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