Don’t Say Berry

We recently received a legal letter from lawyers representing the rather sinister sounding VDF FutureCeuticals Inc.

They have apparently trademarked the term “CoffeeBerry®” for “Food and beverage ingredients, namely, whole processed coffee fruit,” “Nutriceuticals for use as a dietary supplement and as a dietary supplement ingredient,” and “Food supplements, namely, antioxidants” and “Cosmetics and cosmetic ingredients.”

“Nutriceuticals” – Really!!

They took objection to our use of the 2 words that make up their trademarked term, (ie: “coffee” and “berry”) together in order to describe the fruit of the coffee plant in several articles and asking us to remove the term.

To me this seems like a step too far and I’ve no idea whether they actually have the legal right to do this.

However as we don’t have our own legal department we’ve complied by replacing the word “berry” with “cherry” in the relevant articles.

We did also have an article promoting their product which we’ve since removed.

Do we have any legal expert readers out there who can shed any light on this for us? Do you have a non-expert opinion on this?

I see they haven’t got to Wikipedia yet!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_berry

Please let us have your comments below, but be careful what you say, VDF FutureCeuticals Inc. are watching you!