North Country Public Radio has a story on food multinational General Mills' brave struggle against a dangerous enemy: the Potsdam (NY) food Co-Op.
Apparently, the Co-Op used the term 'Bake Off' as the title for its annual fundraiser. The previous nine editions didn't seem to bother anyone. But this year, General Mills decided to sic its lawyers on the non-profit.
The smart thing would have been for General Mills to make a donation to the Co-Op in exchange for them changing the name. Or even for them to actually sponsor the event. A drop in the bucket for General Mills in exchange for good PR.
The Co-Op changed the name of its contest for fear of being sued by the corporate behemoth (annual revenues: $12.2 billion).
3 comments:
The patent attorneys who work full time for General Mills, have nothing else to do.
I had no idea "Bake off" was a copyrighter term eligible for a lawsuit. Sheesh. I can see it now, GM suing all of those small church parishes who hold similar events uner that name...
Knowing how fiercely independent minded the Potsdam region is, I'm surprised GM's tactics haven't done backfired.
Then again, the people/customer's they were targeting probably wouldn't have bought GM products anyway.
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