Meghan Markle has been hit with another setback in her efforts to receive a trademark for her proposed American Riviera Orchard food products and lifestyle brand.
Harry and David, the famed 90-year-old gift basket company, has filed a “protest” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Daily Mail reported.
The $2.2 billion company claims that the name, American Riviera Orchard, is too similar to “Royal Riviera,” the trademark that was given to brothers Harry and David Rosenberg for the premium pears they began raising in their father’s 200-acre orchard in Oregon’s Rogue River Valley in 1914. Twenty years later, the brothers launched their mail-order gift business, featuring their Royal Riviera Pears wrapped in gold foil, which have become popular holiday treats over the decades.
Harry and David’s protest against Meghan’s proposed American Riviera Orchard trademark has been deemed “relevant” because of the “likelihood of confusion” and has been referred to the trademark office’s examining attorney, the Daily Mail said.
This move by Harry and David would appear to give credence to recent comments by Tina Brown, the Princess Diana biographer and former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor. Brown criticized Meghan for selling Prince Harry on the idea that she was a “savvy Hollywood wheeler dealer” who would make them stars and very rich by launching a media and philanthropic empire after they left royal life in 2020. Instead, Meghan has proven her lack of business savvy, being burdened with bad ideas, “the worst judgement in the world,” and a talent for “getting it all wrong,” Brown said.
“Her issue is that she doesn’t listen,” Brown said in an interview with The Ankler podcast. “She has all these people, asks them their opinion, and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do. And all of her ideas are total crap, unfortunately.”
Meghan’s attempt to launch a lifestyle brand has turned out to be an ongoing saga, with the Duchess of Sussex facing repeated issues with the trademark office, according to the Daily Mail.
A year ago, Meghan tried to secure a trademark for The Tig, the lifestyle blog she began when she was a TV actor on the show “Suits,” before she began dating Harry. But the Daily Mail said this trademark bid hit a snag when she failed to submit a “statement of use” with her application, thereby obliging her attorney to seek a six-month extension.
American Riviera Orchard was similarly afflicted last month when the trademark office informed her that “American Riviera” was too vague a term, saying that she had three months to provide clarification, and $700 to continue her application.
It turns out that the launch of American Riviera Orchard may have been premature, as well as pretty muddled. Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden recently revealed that he got wind in March that Meghan was going to launch a lifestyle brand. Before publishing a story, Eden said he contacted her office for a comment.
Eden believes that Meghan was “desperate” to keep news about her lifestyle brand from appearing in the Daily Mail, because she and Harry “despise” the tabloid and Harry has waged a legal battle against its owner. “But that hatred can lead them to make foolish decisions,” Eden wrote.
To scoop the Daily Mail, Meghan pulled the trigger on her American Riviera Orchard launch, sharing links to an Instagram page and website. She also had her celebrity friends publicize jars of strawberry jam and dog biscuits that carried the label.
But that’s reportedly before Meghan had actual products to sell or executives in place to run the company. She also faced suggestions in a detailed report by Puck that suggested that her idea for American Riviera Orchard was heavily “inspired” — or more — by another Southern California-based company, the “decadent lifestyle accouterments company” Flamingo Estate.