olive garden – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Olive Garden At It Again Enforcing Its IP Instead Of Letting Anyone Have Some Fun With Joke NFTs

from the wyhyf dept

You all know about Olive Garden. It’s the chain of… oh, let’s just play along and call them Italian restaurants that have unlimited breadsticks and names of supposedly Italian offerings that appear to have gotten their names by inputting a bunch of Italian food words into a dilapidated AI program that combines them into a series of unholy dish-names. Sure, there’s “Shrimp Scampi”, but there is also “Five Cheese Ziti Al Forno” and “Lasagna Fritta”. I kid of course, but the chain and its parent company, Darden, have also found their way onto Techdirt in the past by being overly aggressive when it comes to trademark enforcement. For instance, Darden attempted to shut down the site allofgarden.com, which was dedicated to tongue in cheek reviews of the chain’s dishes. Darden later apologized for that, blaming some kind of legal bot that crawls for potential trademark infringements on the brand.

We’ll have to see if something similar happens here, as Darden is now going after a site that jokingly sells NFTs to “own” individual Olive Garden locations and/or simply get NFT tokens for free unlimited breadsticks. The site, nonfungibleolivegardens.com has actually sold out of individual locations, but points to a secondary market. The breadstick tokens are, as are their real life counterparts, free and unlimited. Olive Garden’s imagery and name appear all over the site, naturally, and the site’s Twitter account confirmed that the site’s host, OpenSea, had received a takedown demand (the recipients incorrectly call it a “DMCA” takedown, even though it’s about trademarks).

Now, again, Darden IP appears all over those pages. That being said, the site has general language and a specific Q&A on its home page that makes it abundantly clear that it is not affiliated with the real life Olive Garden in any way. This is all one giant joke, in other words, albeit one where some measure of real money is changing hands. It’s also built to be a place for Olive Garden enthusiasts to express that enthusiasm. From the homepage:

For too long, ownership of Olive Garden franchises has been dominated by the capricious whims of the fiat system. That’s why we’re enabling anyone to trustlessly mint a nonfungible token representing 1 of 880 real Olive Garden franchises in the United States.

Our goal is to bootstrap a community of Olive Garden enthusiasts, which is why the franchise mint price is tethered to the reasonable cost of a Tour Of Italy entree ($19.99, as of Dec 20, 2021).

And later, in the Q&A:

Is this affiliated with Olive Garden?

No. We are simply a community of Olive Garden fans invested in both trustless future economies and delicious, reasonably-priced Italian fare.

Hell, the entire “business plan roadmap” the site lays out involves plans for celebrity influencers, “Layer 2 on-chain curbside pickup”, and the eventual buyout of Olive Garden from Darden. The whole thing is done for funsies. Which means that the Darden folks could figure out a way to get involved with the fun, instead of trying to stamp it out. Whether they will or not remains to be seen.

But NFGO certainly isn’t backing down. In addition to the response letter the site sent, which you can see in the embedded/linked tweet above, they’ve also come out with two new NFT tokens. Those would be for — you guessed it — the takedown notice they received and that response letter.

Because when you’re here, you’re hilarious.

Filed Under: enthusiasm, fans, nfts, olive garden, takedown, trademark
Companies: darden restaurants, olive garden

from the mea-cappelini dept

You will hopefully recall the recent story we did on Darden, parent company of the Olive Garden restaurant chain, sending a legal threat letter to the man behind allofgarden.com, a site that reviews Olive Garden dishes, because the internet is a strange, strange place. At issues, according to the threat letter, was that allofgarden.com named Olive Garden in metatags in its reviews of the dishes, which you should already know is nothing remotely resembling trademark infringement or infringement upon any other types of intellectual property, either. With that in mind, Vincent Malone replied to the threat letter in a manner both well-informed of his own rights and one which demonstrated just how funny Malone is. After refusing to comply with the requests in the letter, he demanded a reply within nine days in limerick form.

His demands were not met exactly, but Darden has now responded to Malone, apologizing for the letter, promising no further action would be taken against him, blaming an IP enforcement bot for the letter, and sending him a $50 gift card. Sadly, none of this was delivered in the limerick form Malone had requested.

As apologies for this sort of thing go, this one is pretty good. It was apparently in further conversations outside of this letter that Malone was told of the bot, which may well be true but only demonstrates that too many companies play loose with the way they seek to enforce their rights. This story ends on a positive note only because Malone decided not to immediately back down out of fear of a much larger company, after all. It doesn’t take too much imagination to suppose that there could be, or perhaps have been, instances we don’t know about in which sites simply comply with these unreasonable demands instead of seeking limerick apologies as Malone had.

But if you thought I was going to leave you having read this post without a limerick to read, I can allay those concerns, as Malone himself decided to inform his readers of all of this in poetic form.

As of six thirty-five in the PMs I’ve wrapped up my talks with the chieftains They were misconstrued; I’m not getting sued And I needn’t write out any ™s

Yes! An official who represents Darden Has granted me a total pardon We’ve reached resolution I received absolution For daring to print “olive garden”

The source of the problem was sought And the sender-offender was caught! That e-mail was provided (If you wonder [as I did]) by a prodigious, litigious spam-bot.

My sole issue with Legal’s retort Was the prose of their written report The demand was specific: a reply via lim’rick Well. At least I’m not going to court.

Bravo.

Filed Under: allofgarden, apologies, brand enforcement, olive garden, vincent malone
Companies: darden, mark monitor, olive garden

Olive Garden Asks Olive Garden Reviewer Not To Refer To Olive Garden Due To Trademarks

from the penne-for-your-thoughts? dept

At some point, even the dimmest of lawyers will understand that parody and fair use are not infringement. There may be all sorts of reasons why big companies send dubious cease-and-desist letters over protected speech. Sometimes it’s because lawyers are misinformed. Sometimes it’s to silence criticism.

But in an odd and all around hilarious exchange between the company that owns the Olive Garden chain of restaurants and the owner of a website that reviews Olive Garden dishes, I can’t think of a single reason why a sane lawyer would want to fire off the following letter to allofgarden.com.

To Whom It May Concern:

As you are likely aware, Darden is a full-service restaurant company, and owns and operates over 1,500 restaurants through subsidiaries under the Olive Garden®, LongHorn Steakhouse®, The Capital Grille®, Yard House®, Seasons 52®, Bahama Breeze®, and Eddie V’s Prime Seafood® brands and has a portfolio of over 650 trademarks in over 70 countries related to the same (collectively “Trademarks”.)

In connection with Darden Corporation’s proprietary rights over its famous trademark(s) we are notifying you of the following:

Darden Corporation has recently learned that the trademark Olive Garden appears as a metatag, keyword, visible or hidden text on the web site(s) located at the below listed URL(s) without having obtained prior written authorization from Darden Corporation. This practice infringes upon the exclusive intellectual property rights of Darden Corporation.

http://allofgarden.com/

As a trademark owner, Darden Corporation is obligated to enforce its rights by taking action to ensure that others do not use its trademarks without permission. Unauthorized use of the trademark(s) could create a likelihood of confusion with Darden Corporation’s trademark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site(s), online location(s), products or services.

In light of the above, we request that you respond to this e-mail within ten (10) days, informing us that you have removed all metatags, keywords, visible or hidden texts including trademark(s) presently appearing on the above-cited website(s) and any other website(s), or draw this issue to the attention of the appropriate person(s).

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

Darden Corporation brandenforcements@mm-darden.com

There’s much to unpack there. First, claiming trademark infringement for use of marks in metatags and simple text within a website is a highly dubious practice. But when even the most cursory glance at allofgarden.com makes it clear that it’s a site dedicated to reviewing Olive Garden, it should be immediately obvious that even the most direct reference to the chain would be squarely covered by fair use. Even the name of the site, something of a homophone of the Olive Garden name, would be covered as parody, if not as part of the site’s status as a review site. Even more strangely, it’s not as though this is one of those so-called “sucks sites” dedicated to simply slamming Olive Garden at every turn. Some reviews, such as this one, are purely positive, devoid of snark at all.

But if Malone is a talented reviewer of chain-based “Italian” food, he’s a savant in responding to frivolous legal threats, as he has happily posted his response on his website for all to see.

Mr. Forcements — may I call you Branden? Since this an asynchronous mode of communication, I’m going to assume you are magnanimously acquiescing, and I will refer to you as Branden forthwith — I received your email yesterday.

I am not aware of any law against reviewing food and describing it using the name of the company from which it was procured. Some might even call it Nominative Fair Use. I have helpfully included a link to Wikipedia™, The Free Encyclopedia™, for more information on this concept, in case you are new. Just click on the blue words to access the HyperLink™, and you will be transported there in great haste.

With that in mind, can you be more specific about what you would like me to do? If you want me to remove references to the Olive Garden from my blog, which, I remind you, solely consists of references to Olive Garden, I’m afraid I must decline.

If you are asking me to simply add TradeMark® Symbols™ I must also decline, as I do not know the alt keycode for writing them.

Perhaps you are asking me to take down my blog entirely. In doing so, Darden Corporation would commit its largest crime against humanity since they started charging extra for toppings. Seriously, $2.99 for two lousy meatballs? And you’re saying I ripped you off?

Please respond within nine (9) days, in limerick form.

Wishing the whole Forcements family a pleasant day,

Vincent “Vino” Malone Olive Garden Connoisseur Age 29 and a Half

Every part of this response is pure gold, from the intentional misreading of the emailer’s name to the refusal to comply with every request and link with the reasons why. Malone is being a pleasant pain in the ass in this response, yes, but it’s funny. It’s also now public, thanks to Malone’s posting of it. And, most importantly, the request from Olive Garden is a silly one when viewed with an eye towards the law.

Still, I have to admit I’m slightly hoping that Branden Forcements replies in limerick form as requested, just to see what they come up with. If Olive Garden wants to get on the right side of this thing quickly, that limerick will be in the form of an apology.

Filed Under: allofgarden, olive garden, reviews, threats, trademark, vincent malone
Companies: darden corporation, olive garden