Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story about how Scotts Miracle-Gro is suing TerraCycle, accusing it of trademark infringement for similar packaging, and false advertising for claiming its products are superior.
Among other things, Scotts claims that TerraCycle’s packaging — with its yellow-and-green color scheme, brand name in the center and photos of flowers and vegetables at the bottom — infringes on the trade dress of Scotts’s Miracle-Gro brand. Scotts also accuses TerraCycle of falsely advertising that its products are superior to others, including Scotts’s. In addition to requesting that TerraCycle destroy existing labels and signage at issue in the suit, Scotts asks that all gains, profits and benefits generated from the alleged infractions be awarded to Scotts — a move that might wipe out TerraCycle. Last year, the four-year-old TerraCycle had revenue of $1.5 million (it’s not yet profitable), while 139-year-old Scotts had $2.7 billion.
TerraCycle has created a web site that explains their position.
I don’t know that much about the validity of the lawsuit and whether either company’s legal position has any merit.
But I do know that we sell TerraCycle plant food, and have had success with it. We use it here on the plants in our office, and our Peace Lillies have been blooming like crazy.
I hope TerraCycle is able to figure something out to resolve this!
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 9:03 am and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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2 comments ↓
As a professional graphic designer of over 25 years, I have in fact designed packaging for other lawn care product companies.
I find it comical that Scott’s (I do use there products) would go after a small company based on the TerraCycle label that I have seen.
While it may contain “photos of flowers and vegetables” Scott’s does not have universal rights to all usage of those type of images. In fact any package I have ever designed for Lawn Care Products utilized similar images to one degree or another.
These color combinations of yellow and green are very common in the design of lawn care products across the board and in designing such are obvious choices for these type of products. I have in fact used yellow and greens on lawn care product labels.
Centering a logo is not even worth commenting on.
My immediate look gave me the feeling more of a Goya Food product.
The TerraCycle label does not not in my professional opinion show enough likeness to the “Miracle-Gro” line to accuse TerraCycle of trademark infringement.
FYI:
In the past I have applauded Scotts for their stance regarding their non-smoking employee policy.
Yes, this does seem petty and a waste of legal expense - though as a lawyer, I know some attorney is making good money to pursue this claim.
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