Creating and defending a trademark is very expensive.

Many restaurants would prefer not to spend this money just to prevent unauthorized listings.

They’d rather delegate the responsibility of preventing unauthorized listings to the state attorney who has more resources and expertise.

That's not true. A trademark costs around $300: https://www.uspto.gov/trademark/trademark-fee-information

Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and desist for free. The only time you need a lawyer is if they refuse and you want to sue them. If the court rules in your favor, you can even sue them for the legal costs and costs of damages.

Sorry for the cynicism, but I really don't understand why is it ok to ask small restaurants to spend $200-300 bucks and send a cease and desist letter, but it's not ok for the law to ask investor-backed startups to make a friendly contact to those same restaurants before using their brand.

In the end it's less work for the investor-backed business, since with the C&D route they would need to register domains or create pages for restaurants that don't want the service only for their (very expensive!) legal department to receive a letter so they can delete everything.

I mean just send an email to the restaurant so they can submit an authorization beforehand... tell them the advantages, let them make the decision...

And when the massive corporation that rose to dominance by ignoring local laws also ignores your DIY cease & desist letter, you're out $300. Heck, they'd ignore it if a lawyer wrote it too. Filing a lawsuit would be required, which they'd also ignore and delay as much as possible, far more than the local pizzeria can afford, until there was a class action.

I don't think Uber Eats has a support page that says "Submit your amateur cease and desist letters here". A $300 trademark is a cheap business expense, using it to scare away massive corporations is expensive.

> Enforcing it is free: you can send your own cease and desist for free.

Enforcing it is free if your time is free.

time, and knowledge of how to write such a letter in a way to seem "serious legal threat"

Is this something you have personally done? Because this sounds like an internet fantasy to me.

But suppose we indulge your fantasy. A restaurant owner, who is already incredibly busy, decides to figure out how to register a trademark and sends the cease and desist. The venture-backed startup's in-house counsel looks at it, sees that it was written by an amateur, and just laughs. Now what?

You're getting downvoted because somehow people think that restaurant owners shouldn't have to handle basic aspects of operating a business such as establishing a trademark to operate their business under. Without a trademark, what are they going to do if, say, another restaurant opens up a few blocks away with the same name?

(And as I understand it, you get some trademark rights just by establishing a business, so you don't have to register the trademark to sue UberEats or Grubhub or whoever)

> Enforcing it is free:

Are you proposing to do the work of writing up and sending C&Ds for these restaurants personally gratis? That's the only way it's "free".

Despite the downvotes -- I think there is a genuine question here. There isn't the need for more laws just enforcement of existing ones.

Purporting to represent someone elses business is an egregious infringement of trademark.

The answer is likely that our legal system is too expensive for local restaurant owners to afford the cost of suing a grubhub sized company. Restaurants are a business notoriously prone to failure and low margins. Maybe a class action lawsuit would work in this case, but mostly it’s just another case where the legal system needs to be fixed to rely less on having money for justice to occur.

Two things which would help are:

1) Allow both private and public right-of-action for most laws. If the AG is busy, I should be able to sue. If I can't afford to sue, an AG should be able to take it up on my behalf.

2) Go back to circa 1800 style courts, where you don't need a lawyer to represent you. You both make your case to the judge. Not too much procedure. Perhaps extending small claims court up to $100,000 would do much of the same.

This is what Class Actions, and Business organizations are suppose to be for

Also nothing is stopping the AG of the state from forming a Fraud case agaist the major players.

The excuse of "well the courts cost too much money" is not abated by creating even more complex laws that will still require an expensive lawyer to enforce

in reality this law is designed to protect those companies that already made billions on abusing trademark laws by making it seem like what they did was legal, a "loophole" in the law that is now "closed" for new competitors

Expect class action obviously does not work, because is not like existing laws have stopped it. But yes, the solution might not be more laws but rather overhaul of the legal system to make it possible to enforce existing laws.

Do you think there is a trademark police force that you can call to enforce your trademark? Trademark is a civil matter and realitively pretty expensive to pursue. If you're a restaurant who just laid off half your staff due to COVID, how do you engage a trademark lawyer?

It's not a genuine question.

Companies shouldn't have to manufacture lawsuits every time a hostile third party wants to screw over their customers.

This law is both pro-business AND pro-transparency.

I would guess that most non-chain restaurants don't own a trademark for their name. It's an expensive process that many likely can't afford.

In CA the business will get common law trademark rights in their geographical area just by virtue of doing business under that name, but they would still need to sue the delivery companies which have in house counsel for these kind of things.

In the US you are not required to register your trademark in order to enforce it. However, you do get some additional protections. The cost is $225 and it is good for 10 years

How does it violate trademark law to say that “we will deliver food from restaurant X”? It seems clear to the customer who is providing the goods vs the service. What’s not clear is if there is an agreement, which is what this new law makes clear.

The problem doesn't seem that related to trademarks to me. These app delivery platforms are impersonating companies, not selling their own products under someone else's brand. The food comes from where they claim it did. The issue with impersonation is that customers who got worse experience (cold food, long delivery, etc.) end up blaming the restaurant for it, even though the restaurant had nothing to do with it.

How is trading under the cover of someone else’s mark not a trademark issue? If I’m representing myself as selling “TeMPOral Pizza” for delivery, the fact that I’m actually delivering pizza made at the TeMPOral Pizza Shop isn’t entire cover.

If I opened up a shop in the mall with giant lit white Apple logos, the fact that I sold genuine Apple product inside would not absolve me of trademark infringement.

(Trademark violations are more than just counterfeit items.)

Yeah, if you try that with a megacorp, they'll drag you up and down the courts until you give up:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/09/pirate-trader-...

It isn’t working. This isn’t a hypothetical problem.

Because civil laws only protect people rich enough to hire lawyers.

This should not be down voted. The idea that a popular little family owned and operated Indian restaurant named "Bombay Curry" and still reeling from COVID-19 restrictions can some how sue Skip the Diehes or Uber Eats for Trademark infringement is absolutely ludicrous.

Yeah, Uber is a company which is involved in legal battles with governments all over the world. I am sure they would make it a real pain to sue them. The idea of restaurants prusuing trademark cases against Uber is ridiculous.

Yeah, this is the legal system in a nutshell. Don't think you're safe in any meaningful way because the law says so. At the end of the day you would have to litigate it yourself and that is usually not worth it unless the offense is truly egregious.

Against an adversary with deep pockets like a corporation, you can lose even if you win. This is how patent trolls extort companies, litigating a patent suite is usually a seven figure endeavor. And there's no guarantee you win. It's cheaper to pay the licensing free from the trolls, who are smart enough to make sure it's always less than the cost of litigating.

I don't know why this is getting down voted, its absolutely naive to assume this isn't how it plays out in the real world.

It’s getting downvoted because it seems to be phrased in a deliberately inflammatory way. You can (and others downthread have) express the same idea that many restaurants can’t afford the expense in a manner more likely to lead to productive discussion.

Because most restaurant owners want to be in the business of running a restaurant, not litigating some out-of-state entities with billion-dollar warchests.

Doing the former is working two full-time jobs, as is.

People tend to forget how critical resources are in our country to rights. You often need time, money, expertise, etc. to enter legal battles and if the costs of those resources outweigh the benefits, you often allow your legal rights to be infringed. Pursuit of some rights are cost prohibitive because everything in the US is so tightly tied to finances.

Many of your rights in the US are directly tied to your financial resources, not only in the sense that you have the resources to litigate or absorb failed litigation but even in the sense that those with massive financial resources essentially buy their own rights through legislation.

Let's not pretend the justice system doesn't have underlying flaws that allow justice to skew one way or another from money alone because it does. If you're on trial for a serious offense, you're probably not going to use a public appointed attorney if you can avoid it because we know how the legal system works and how financial incentives will attract better legal representation in the private sector than those for public appointment.

This idealized and fictionalized system where I can walk into a court of law and defend myself or use a public appointed counsel and 'win' as long as I've done nothing illegal or unjust is a laughable joke for many legal battles, especially those of more significance.

Them not wanting to handle their own problems is not a reason for the State to subsidize solutions for them.

The entire purpose of legislature is to legislate solutions to problems that society faces.

Not to legislate solutions to private businesses' disputes.

Business disputes are handled through the legal system.

1. The legal system is a direct product of legislature, as are the rules that it enforces.

2. It is absolutely the legislature's responsibility to step into systemic, one-to-many disputes, especially when there is a gross power imbalance between the two sides.

The app could say "we deliver from the Greek place on Main Street" to avoid using the trademark, but still be in violation of the new law.

Also, many restaurants can't get a trademark. My favorite local place is "Joe's Pub" but I don't imagine that's a unique name.

Because many restaurant owners don't even think about trademarks, or their names are too "generic" to be allowed to trademark.

The usual exception are the franchise operations (mcdonalds, BK, subway, kfc, ...) because these are thought from the start to be exclusive.

Why enforce existing law, we can you use this opportunity to create ever more complex laws to ensure stake holders that already abused to the condition the law is purporting to address can maintain their advantage and ensure no new entrants to the market

That is all this does, it protect GrubHub, DoorDash and other large players from competition

How, specifically, does this protect GrubHub/DoorDash/etc?

this law is designed to protect those companies who already made billions on abusing existing laws by making it seem like what they did was legal, a "loophole" in the law that is now "closed" for new competitors

They are not "new entrants" in the market, they have a network effect now so it will be preferable to them to sign exclusive deals with restaurants to further ensure there can not be any competition

So the alternative should be that we should continue to funnel VC money into every new predatory impersonation business?

Sometimes it really is a loophole that is now closed, and the government can’t subsequently dissolve all companies they’ve used it, they can only ask companies to stop.