Maker’s Mark Bourbon Trademark Case Study
Here’s a case study about a famous bourbon trademark. I’m going to spend the next three minutes talking about this, I’m Angela Langlotz, trademark and copyright attorney. I go live here on weekdays to discuss trademarks and copyrights. If you have trademark or copyright law questions, drop them into the comments below this video and I’ll answer them in a future live. So I was thinking about trade dress the other day and noticed in my perusal on the Internet that Jack not Jack Daniel’s sorry, scratch that.
Maker’s Mark — had recently received a trademark registration for its distinctive wax dripping down the neck of the bottle. And here’s what I’m talking about. This is from my bar. We have Maker’s Mark Whiskey. And as you can see on the neck of the bottle, there’s this wax seal and it’s just kind of casually dripping down the neck of the bottle. As an aside, I’ll note that some of the bottles, they dip the whole neck in and there’s one or two of those in every case that they ship and those are quite coveted.
Anyway, I digress. So I wanted to go show you this this trademark; this is considered trade dress. It’s the way that the product is presented to the consumer in such a way that the packaging is distinctive. So let me shrink myself into the corner and I’ll show you what I mean. So this is their trademark. You can see here there’s sort of an outline, a drawing of the mark itself. It’s this dripping wax. Now, they didn’t claim red as a color, although on their bourbon, they always use it as red.
So what are they claiming this on? They’re claiming it on these goods and services, alcoholic beverages, except beer and whiskey. All right. So that would leave leave them open to doing wine, I guess. Now, let’s look at the mark description. “Color is not claimed as a feature of the mark, which is kind of interesting because I’ve always seen it as red. The mark consists of a waxlike coating covering the cap and neck of the container of the goods and trickling down the body of the container in a free form, irregular pattern.
The dotted outline of the container is not claimed as part of the trademark and is intended only to show the position of the mark.” So you’ll notice here that on the drawing they — you can’t really see it’s too small. But this bottle outline, it shows the position of the the trademark on the bottle, but it’s not really considered part of the mark. So in other words, they’re not trying to register the shape of the bottle, although they could if that were distinctive.
They’re really registering the wax and the way it drips down the bottle neck and onto the shoulders of the bottle. So that’s an example of a distinctive trade dress that can be registered as a trademark. So think about these sorts of things when you’re designing your product or your packaging, because these sorts of distinctive product features or packaging — as long as they’re not inherently useful, right? So they have to be decorative or have no functional purpose. If they have a functional purpose, then they can’t be protected by a trademark unless the function is like merely incidental.
Anyway, if you have ideas like this, you can incorporate those into your product and make your product more distinctive and make it stand out from your competitors. I’m Angela Langlotz. Find me online at TrademarkDoctor.net. I’m also on YouTube video TrademarkDoctor.net forward slash YouTube. I’ve got about 500 videos there. We’re going to have a big celebration when I reach 500. If you have questions, drop them into the comments below. I will answer them on a future live video.
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Contact Dallas, Texas trademark attorney Angela Langlotz today to get started on a trademark application for your valuable brand.