What’s killing me about royal gossip these days is that there’s fertile ground for some deeper dives on so many of the left-behind Windsors. Why is the Duchess of Edinburgh flying all over the place without any of the royal rota covering it? What’s really going on with King Charles’s cancer treatments? Why was Queen Camilla so f–king rude to her tour hosts? Why isn’t the Princess of Wales wearing her sapphire engagement ring this year? Why did William lose so much weight and why is he insisting on that scuzzy beard? Instead of actually focusing on the royals they pay for, the British media is still bound and determined to scream and cry about, you guessed it, the Duchess of Sussex. Meghan plans to launch her American Riviera Orchard brand later this year or maybe in the new year. You know what means: yet more reporting on trademarks. From the Mail’s Eden Confidential.
The scope of her ambitions appears to know no bounds, as was memorably observed by her friend, Kim Kardashian, who said that Meghan Markle was intent on ‘changing the world’. But are those dreams destined to be for ever foiled? The question is prompted by a development which will dismay fans who yearn to taste the Duchess of Sussex’s jam or any of the other goodies which she envisages offloading to the public via American Riviera Orchard, the ‘lifestyle brand’ which she unveiled in April.
Her bid to trademark the American Riviera Orchard name has run into what might be described as a multi-billion dollar problem. It comes in the uncompromising form of a protest lodged with the United States Patent and Trademark Office by a firm owning the trademark ‘Royal Riviera’.
The owner, Harry & David, is an American institution, founded in 1934, with annual sales of £1.7billion and 3,300 staff. The protest, deemed ‘relevant’ because of ‘likelihood of confusion’, has been referred to Marco Wright, the Trademark Office’s Examining Attorney. It’s the latest bit of bad luck for Meghan, 43.
A year ago, her bid to secure a trademark for her lifestyle blog, The Tig, hit a snag when she failed to submit a ‘statement of use’ with her application, thereby obliging her attorney, Danielle Weiss, to seek a six-month extension.
American Riviera Orchard was similarly afflicted last month when, as I disclosed, the trademark office informed her that ‘American Riviera’ was too vague a term, stipulating that she had three months to provide clarification, as well as paying an additional $700 (£535) to continue her application.
Tina Brown, erstwhile editor of Vanity Fair and author of a dazzling biography of Princess Diana, fears that this isn’t bad luck. Meghan, Brown declared last week, is ‘flawless about getting it all wrong’, adding that ‘all of her ideas are total c**p’. Megs could do worse than checking out Harry & David. Its fortune was established when its founders hand-delivered exquisite comice pears to city businessmen.
Again, instead of focusing on the actual gossip stories with the left-behind royals, we’re getting yet another mind-numbingly tedious story about American trademarks. Eden really found the smoking gun this time, didn’t he? People who were on the fence about supporting Meghan have now made up their minds, based solely on a trademark protest in America. What’s even funnier is that Harry & David have a product line called “Royal Riviera” and they’re the ones beefing with a duchess who left the “royal” branding out of her product line.
Photos courtesy of Archewell and Avalon Red.