“The Killer Brownie is an important and significant mark, not just locally, but nationally, and we will always defend our client’s effort and investment in creating the mark,” attorney Michael Sandner of the Dayton law firm Pickrel Schaeffer & Ebeling told this news outlet via email late Wednesday afternoon. “Nonetheless, we were pleased to be able to resolve our dispute and have Discovery Communications agree to remove any reference to what we viewed as infringing recipes for ‘Killer Brownies.’”
Credit: MARK FISHER/STAFF
Credit: MARK FISHER/STAFF
Dorothy Lane market adopted the Killer Brownie trademark in 1985 “to identify its distinctive, high-quality brownies,” the lawsuit said. DLM registered the trademark in 1988, and it remains “in full force and effect,” the local grocery chain’s lawsuit said. In 2002, DLM established Killer Brownie Ltd. as a separate company.
But the Food.com web site has published and displayed several brownie recipes with the word “Killer” in the title, including “Killer Brownies by Chapstick,” and “Killer Triple Chip Brownies by Perfect Pixie” and “Leslie’s Killer Brownies by Fairy Godmother.”
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
The use of such recipe titles “is likely to cause confusion or mistake or deception of purchasers as to the source or origin” of the web site’s recipes, and is likely to lead customers to “believe that they are dealing with” Dayton’s own Killer Brownie company, the lawsuit said.
Messages left with Discovery Communications officials Wednesday afternoon had not been returned by Thursday morning.
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