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Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

impossiblehq.com

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Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#71
post #68

Case number for locating it in PACER: 5:2021cv02419 At a glance of the complaint it seems that Impossible X started this with complaints and legal action against mpossible Foods for infringing on their trademarks. The complaint additionally shows that Impossible X was granted their registration of IMPOSSIBLE on Jan 9th, 2018.

Here's a list of Impossible trademarks: https://impossiblex.com/trademarks/ Note the logo: Class 041 | 025 | 12/18/2012 https://trademark.trademarkia.com/impossible-85578345.html The registration date was in 2012, and, apart from the blank line in the middle, is identical to impossible food's logo. Both use League Gothic Font.

Good info thanks. My comment wasn't intended to be a statement of fact by me, but rather what Impossible Foods claims. The complaint is now available on courtlistener.

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#73
post #38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I've seen suggests to me that most people's annoyance with perceived "preachy" vegans comes from cognitive dissonance around being forced to confront that vegans have a good point. Why confront real issues when you can make a bacon joke and say "oh, I could never give up cheese"? It's like when talking with someone who is very disciplined about exercise. Many will say something like "wow you're so lucky to…

I do think it cuts both ways; veganism is extremely strange. The strangeness does not prove that it is good or bad -- but absolute veganism (as perhaps distinguishable from other historically popular, frequently religious diet practices) is wildly out of line with nearly all humans in all of human history -- and could reasonably appear to be overly simplistic. So, I think the "vegans that are complained about" are ne…

Conversely, it can easily be argued that it is paradoxical to normalize the slaughter and consumption of animals while simultaneously holding the belief that they should be protected (e.g. animal abuse laws).

Approaching how we life our lives primarily from an ethical lens can lead to all sorts of uncomfortable or strange conclusions, however.

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#74
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black person here. I don't think (though I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain) that the word "prejudice" is best here? You (very probably) made a choice to be a certain way, here. So, the "judice" part is correct, and people should perhaps be nicer, but this doesn't feel like the right word.

Thank you for the feedback. I understand your point. I was going off a dictionary definition along these lines: > preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience But I totally get that prejudice has connotations here that make it inappropriate for me as a white man to use

[deleted]

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#75
Link to Impossible's trademark (for nutrition - they have 18)

https://trademark.trademarkia.com/impossible-nutrition-87116...

This was from 2018 (important I think).

Another was this: https://trademark.trademarkia.com/impossible-85578345.html

But the class is not a super overlap with impossible foods.

Here is impossible foods mark.

https://trademarks.justia.com/861/02/impossible-86102158.htm...

2013 was the filing date here.

With an english language word, the trademark protection is (generally) going to be a bit narrower (ie, specific class etc).

For what it is worth, at a 10 second glance this is not the slam dunk little vs big player thing.

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#76

As a vegan myself this is very unfortunate because we are already easy targets and subject to a lot of prejudice. Impossible Meat bullying a small company might unleash a backlash of anti-vegan sentiment that can take on a life of its own. Make no mistake it has been there all along. Go back to other discussions about veganism here on HN and you will see the common anti-vegan memes. But when you're one of the leading…

> Go back to other discussions about veganism here on HN and you will see the common anti-vegan memes.

You will also see a lot of outlandish claims about veganism, human diet and health and, food in general which is generally where the backlash starts.

I've seen claims like "humans have evolved to be vegan", "beef only has vitamin b12 because of b12 supplements", "if you eat properly, your body will generate it's own vitamin b12".

You'll also see dismissive, no true Scotsman, responses to issues with vegan diets like struggles to get enough b12, calcium and iodine.

I try to eat vegan, or at least vegetarian, a few days a week, mostly by eating traditionally vegetarian meals. Impossible meat is highly processed and is neither healthy nor a climate change solution.

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#77
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black person here. I don't think (though I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain) that the word "prejudice" is best here? You (very probably) made a choice to be a certain way, here. So, the "judice" part is correct, and people should perhaps be nicer, but this doesn't feel like the right word.

Thank you for the feedback. I understand your point. I was going off a dictionary definition along these lines: > preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience But I totally get that prejudice has connotations here that make it inappropriate for me as a white man to use

Absurd. Have you heard of "religious prejudice"? That's prejudice and based off of a choice.

Racial discrimination does not own the term prejudice.

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#78
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black person here. I don't think (though I'm not going to say I'm 100% certain) that the word "prejudice" is best here? You (very probably) made a choice to be a certain way, here. So, the "judice" part is correct, and people should perhaps be nicer, but this doesn't feel like the right word.

Thank you for the feedback. I understand your point. I was going off a dictionary definition along these lines: > preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience But I totally get that prejudice has connotations here that make it inappropriate for me as a white man to use

I cannot believe I am reading someone claim prejudice is a word that should not be used if you have a certain skin color.

Did the judicial system stop dismissing cases with prejudice?

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#79
post #24

Will you concede that many, but certainly not all, vegans bring it upon themselves with their moralistic pontificating about those who are not vegan?

Everything I've seen suggests to me that most people's annoyance with perceived "preachy" vegans comes from cognitive dissonance around being forced to confront that vegans have a good point. Why confront real issues when you can make a bacon joke and say "oh, I could never give up cheese"? It's like when talking with someone who is very disciplined about exercise. Many will say something like "wow you're so lucky to…

> comes from cognitive dissonance around being forced to confront that vegans have a good point.

The problem on polarized issues is rarely "one side knows they have no good points and are just trying to avoid that the other side does". Really this mindset would be part of the preachyness problem in the first place, the idea that the only reason people don't like this side is they know this side is right so why aren't they just admitting it!

> Why confront real issues when you can make a bacon joke and say "oh, I could never give up cheese"?

I agree with this but probably in a different meaning than you meant. It's not by default "I don't want to deal with the consequences of their valid stance so I'll deflect until it goes away" it's a "I really don't want to deal with the religious guy handing out bibles when I'm just going to the café for a coffee, I'll just joke with him I couldn't live without every night instead of risking dealing with a surprise preachy interaction again". The interaction gave no hint of who actually had or knew they didn't have the right stance about religion.

> It's like when talking with someone who is very disciplined about exercise. Many will say something like "wow you're so lucky to have such good genes" to deflect from the fact that they're just not willing to put in that level of work.

In some situations like this example they probably know they aren't doing the right thing, in others (as given in the example above) that's not the case. That some topics are so is not evidence one way or another about another topic being so. The only common theme is that it was uncomfortable for the person deflecting, not the reason it was uncomfortable.

Re: Impossible food sues to cancel earlier trademark owners

#80

Reading this: http://casefilingsalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Impos... it seems like Impossible X complained first and Impossible food is saying that they want it declared that they are not infringing on Impossible X's trademarks. IOW: little guy complained first and big guy is asking for relief that they are not doing anything wrong. Is there more to the story?

Thanks for sharing this. It looks like Impossible X (the defendant) was the first to sue to have Impossible Foods cease using their logo and trademark. And now Impossible Foods isn't budging and asserting their weight through counter-suit. It still feels very unfair even though the small guy started it; he's trying to protect his brand. He has supplied actual cases of confusion between the two companies according to this filing.

He should have definitely included that information in this blog post though. It's more than a little misleading.

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