General Mills filed an application to register the color yellow appearing as the uniform background on a box of Cheerios.   It contended that consumers have come to identify the color yellow specifically with Cheerios, when used in connection with the goods.  It submitted survey evidence and expert reports to support the claim of acquired distinctiveness.  However, the trademark examiner concluded that General Mills failed to prove acquired distinctiveness and that the mark fails to function as a mark.  An appeal was submitted to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (“TTAB”).

General Mills argued that the purchasing public recognizes the color yellow on a package of toroidal (ring or doughnut-shaped) oat-based breakfast cereal as an indicator that it is the source of the cereal.  The record showed that General Mills has sold Cheerios since 1945.  In the decade prior to 2015, General Mills spent over $1 billion in marketing yellow-box Cheerios with sales exceeding $4 billion.  However, the question was not whether consumers recognized the term Cheerios as a source indicator but whether the color yellow identifies origin.

The TTAB agreed with the examiner’s conclusion citing lack of exclusive use of the color yellow.  The Board noted that the examiner pointed to 23 cereal products that offered packaging in a similar color.  Several of the products are even offered by companies which are recognized as General Mills’ biggest competitors:  Kellogg, Post, and Quaker.  Some of General Mills’ survey subjects showed their awareness of several of the products, especially Honeycomb and Corn Pops.  Additional cereal boxes cited included Joe’s O’s, Honey O’s, Tasteeos, Honey Bunches of Oats, Crispix, and Life.  The Board concluded that General Mills is not alone in offering oat-based cereals or even toroidal shaped, oat-based cereal in a yellow package.  Thus, customers are unlikely to perceive yellow packaging as an indicator of a unique source.  While the color may be attractive and eye-catching ornamentation, it alone did not connect to a potential source.   The Board noted that while customers are familiar with the yellow color of the Cheerio’s box, the color yellow is only one aspect of the complex trade dress that includes many other features that perform as a distinguishing and source-indicating function.   It was not persuaded that customers perceive the proposed mark, the color yellow alone, as indicating the source these goods.  The Board found the yellow background did not acquire distinctiveness and does not function as a trademark.

The case teaches that it is important to recognize what mark or components thereof function to identify a source. A question to ponder is, with what features do consumers identify to connect a particular good or service with a source of origin? General Mills took an aggressive view of the source identifying capability of this color which the Board concluded was not correct.  It is possible that if additional features had been included in connection with the overall trade dress, that registration may have been possible.