Philadelphia-based vegan food company, Vegadelphia, has accused Dunkin’ and Beyond Meat of trademark violations relating to a slogan.
As a company, Vegadelphia was founded in 2004. It sells meat alternative products such as veggie lean beef, veggie lean chicken and crab cakes to restaurants and retailers along the East Coast.
Vegan breakfast sandwich
The issue in question is around a vegan breakfast sandwich that the two global companies collaborated on a few years ago and launched in 2019. Containing Beyond Meat products, it was subsequently sold in Dunkin’ stores. However, Vegadelphia claims that the pair knew about its federally registered trademarked, “great taste, plant-based” slogan when they started using it for related advertising campaigns.
Vegadelphia says it has used the original slogan since 2013 and has complained that Dunkin’ and Beyond’s campaign caused a “profitable shift of Dunkin’s marketplace positioning, expansion of its nationwide overall sales, increase in customer purchases per visit, growth of Beyond’s base of repeat customers, and improvement of Dunkin’s share price, greatly enhancing the goodwill of both companies.”
The vegan breakfast sandwich has since been dropped from most of its store menus last year.
Branding advertisement placement and imagery
In addition to the alleged slogan imitation, Vegadelphia claims that Dunkin is using placement and imagery in its branding advertisements that are almost identical to its own. This includes font style, text distribution and the replication of images.
Vegadelphia has asked for the court to block Dunkin’ and Beyond Meat from continuing to use its slogan and has requested financial compensation for damages. The amount requested is unknown.
No Parties were able to comment on the situation.
Similar infringement lawsuit
You may remember a similar trademark infringement lawsuit between Glebe Farm and Oatly regarding the name of an oat milk product. Oatly was not happy about the name “Oaty” being used in the UK and felt it was too close to its, already established, name. Have a read…
