In America, could a food-selling company register the names ‘Kosher’, ‘Pareve’, or ‘Halal’ as trademarks and commence to selling Kosher brand Crab, Ham, and Cheese Sandwiches, or Halal brand Pork Roasts?
No. Trademarks that may deceive or confuse people are not allowed. Also, you usually can’t trademark an existing, commonly used term.
Click on the Trademarks button to search trademarks.
There’s lots of trademarked kosher ‘something or other’.
Only two trademarks, both dead, contain the word pareve.
The several variants in Halal I looked at all had disclaimers of exclusivve rights to the word. It’s the design being trademarked.
The same thing goes for variants of ‘K’.
Squink: That’s interesting. I was thinking that some rule like the one RealityChuck alluded to applied, such that someone would be constrained from successfully getting a mark that contains or consists of a real word of use in the field. Would a software company be able to trademark the phrase ‘recursive-descent’ as it applies to compilers? (That is a very commonly used term of art that describes a specific strategy often employed in building compilers. It has a decades-long history of active use in the field.)
Almost forgot: If the company that owns the ‘Halal’ mark, say, began blatantly misusing it in the way I outlined in my OP and was sued over it, would it likely lose the mark? Has any case of this kind ever come before a judge?