Chipotle Sues Sweetgreen over Its New Burrito Bowl | Hacker News Reader

Chipotle Sues Sweetgreen over Its New Burrito Bowl

wsj.com

17 pointsimpish920814 comments

> The burrito chain alleges in the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, that Sweetgreen is using the word chipotle in capital letters, mimicking its trademarked logo.

It's very standard for names of specific dishes and menu items to be capitalized, isn't it?

If you go look at a McDonald's menu, their unique trademarked items like Big Mac and Chicken McNuggets are going to be capitalized, but so will their generically named menu items like Cheeseburger and Double Cheeseburger.

In the cookbook "Joy of Cooking", where you find a recipe that uses chicken stock as an ingredient, they capitalize that as Chicken Stock because they mean their specific recipe for it.

I'm not convinced customers are going to see "Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl" and, because "Chipotle" is capitalized, think it means Chipotle as in the restaurant chain.

And Chipotle is a noun and an ingredient in style of food. What if they named their restaurant Chicken and everyone that had a capitalized Chicken in their title was sued?

Dumb.

IE the "Monster" strategy.

At least this all involves food, and specific foods. Monster seems to be reaching more as far as energy drink… to video game.

On the one hand, too bad for you for naming your restaurant chain after a pepper vegetable. OTOH, calling your new product "Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl" is starting to bump up against the place where I'd agree, "yeah, I could see an argument for customer confusion". Unlike, say, confusing a nasty-tasting energy drink with an indie video game.

For one, c'mon, there's nothing "burrito" about throwing some ingredients in a bowl. Plenty of "bowl" places get by just fine calling their product "bowl" (including Sweetgreen, for the rest of their menu items). I'll allow Chipotle, because they took what would normally get wrapped in a tortilla, and put it in a bowl. But guess what Sweetgreen doesn't sell? Burritos. I find in favor of Chipotle.

> OTOH, calling your new product "Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl" is starting to bump up against the place where I'd agree, "yeah, I could see an argument for customer confusion".

But what is the customer confusion here? Are people choosing to go to Sweetgreen in order to purchase a product they believe is from Chipotle? I find that unlikely.

What is the actual damage to Chipotle?

"Oh, they have some cross-promotion with Chipotle to sell their burrito bowls here." isn't an outlandish line of thinking. Ignoring, of course, that they called their product "Chipotle Burrito Bowl", which ought to make the complaint obvious.

But let's go with your argument. Hyundai decides to make an automobile called the "Corvette". Are people going to to Hyundai dealers to purchase a product they believe is from Chevy? Maybe, maybe not, but you don't get to call your car "Corvette" unless you're Chevy. And you don't get to call your chicken bowl "Chipotle Burrito Bowl" unless your restaurant's name is "Chipotle".

Chipotle Mexican Grill has a side item called "Chips & Tomatillo-Green Chili Salsa".

Is that infringing on the trademark for Chili's Grill & Bar[1]?

What about the trademark for La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill[2]?

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[1] https://chilis.com/

[2] https://www.lasalsa.com/

If the other automobile manufacturer’s name is “Compact SUV” then I’d probably tell them to suck it up when other automobile manufacturers also sell compact SUVs.

> "Oh, they have some cross-promotion with Chipotle to sell their burrito bowls here."

Who is going to Sweetgreen or their website to even encounter this information when they're trying to get Chipotle?

As for the rest, Chipotle Burrito Bowl is nothing like Corvette. Burrito bowls are an incredibly common dish and chipotle is a very common flavor with a major impact on the dish. This is more like naming your hot dog business "Beef" and getting mad when people sell beef hotdogs. This trademark was genericized before Chipotle existed.

> Hyundai decides to make an automobile called the "Corvette".

Very bad analogy as Corvette is not a generic automotive term.

There may really be no damage to Chipotle, but the nature of trademark law is that failing to defend your trademarks can result in you losing the ability to enforce them. By not going after this likely non-damaging case, Chipotle could run the risk of not being able to defend against an actually damaging use.

So what is the correct name for a chipotle chicken burrito bowl, given that’s literally what it is?

https://archive.ph/qcT04

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