(The potential hitch here is that most restaurants are small businesses, and small businesses aren't great about doing things like registering their trademarks. But you can still build a claim even around an unregistered trademark under certain circumstances: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-good-unregister...)
If doordash didn't sell Saddleback food, i'd agree, but given that doordash distributes Saddleback products, seems reasonable to me they are allowed to advertise "buy Saddleback bbq here"
What these companies are doing is definitely misleading but I don't think anyone is accidentally purchasing from Applebees thinking they were getting Saddleback BBQ.
It would be like mentioning a popular brand on your website in order to get the search engine traffic for that brand, even though you don't sell it.
You can't lawfully squat a brands trademarks, neither in SERPs, domain names, nor in real world signposts.
You can use trademarks for comparison but having a signpost - virtual or actual - that has another brand on it is tortuous infringement. Bait and switch is rightly unlawful.
Interestingly googling around the principle usage -- to mean pertaining to a tort -- of this spelling is in UK Terms of Use. It's quite hard to search though as often people will talk about tortuous caselaw [1], meaning 'twisting and turning'. Both usages can be in the same document, so Google Search - in particular - is no good here.
Spelling "tortuous": I find supporting documents from the UK Home Office [3], the UK IPO (including in court proceedings for trademark), and in private practice references to UK tort law, eg [2] dated 2019.
I don't consider my usage to be wrong per se but will consider using tortious in international forums (I so wanted to write "fora", lol); thanks for the query, terse as it was.
It's possible we're all using it "incorrectly" of course. I work in the IP sector, we might all be drinking from the same fountain (eg perhaps reading past UK caselaw keeps us archaic).
[1] https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/brand-management/signif..., example of talking about an intricate case that twists and turns.
[2] https://thelawreviews.co.uk/edition/the-intellectual-propert... talking about an infringement of a tort, as tortuous.
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/references-to-the... , note I'm assuming the Home Office is the origin, it's Gov, but I don't really see mention of the department that owns that data.
While we're on the topic—that's probably ‘principal’.
That is exactly what is happening. Say Saddleback isn't open on Tuesdays. Boom, that visitor now sees a long list of BBQ joints to order from that can still be delivered. Since they are in the mood for BBQ clearly, they are going to order from Uncle Bucks BBQ instead.
This should be open & shut huge fines for DoorDash, damages paid to this restaurant (and many others), and enforcement to prevent it from happening again.
People working for these companies and facilitating this should be ashamed of their employer and either quit or vocally demand changes internally.
It would depend on the terms of service. If it clearly outlines their self-serving goals when spending "your" advertising dollars, then it seems it falls back to the owners for signing into such an agreement.
It must be really difficult out there for so many minimal margin businesses to make such Faustian bargains. Then again, I never really understood how Groupon was able to do it either. Is the "restaurant owner" marketplace really that unsophisticated, or is it so bespoke that it's incredibly difficult for any one owner to fully do their diligence?
This is the true effect. It gives you something similar, but degrades your brand name and sidesteps the law.
DoorDash isn't telling you that Applebees is Saddleback BBQ, they are just not making it as easy as they could to help you find what you are looking for.
Fraud is hard to prove because you have to prove intent, but this at best incompetence, almost assuredly false advertising, and pretty clearly fraud although good luck proving it in court.
How is this any different than a newspaper ad saying "You can get Coke at Krogers" and then Krogers having a Pepsi display in the soda aisle.
1. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/6KsGyAeFFfeliOLsLJzPQf5o1o...
I'm not sure if you were the one who downvoted me here but it hardly seems fair to downvote someone for having a different point of view.
> Possibly the most maddening thing is that if a customer clicks on the link, it does NOT take them to a webpage to order from Saddleback BBQ. It takes the user to a general page to order BBQ from anyone that serves BBQ. At the top of the list? Applebees.
Well isn't that plain fraud? (And no adding some * somewhere with a disclaimer doesn't make it not fraud. The point is that it intentionally misguides/tricks/manipulates the user with the intention of harming the given brand (by on-the-fly replacing it)).
EDIT(clarification): It's like going into a shop and asking for a specific samsung tv and the salesman goes and comes back with a philipps tv saying here is your tv, the price is .... Sure if you look clearly at it it's not the PC you asked for but if you are in a hurry or social insecure you might still end up buying it even through you didn't want to.