… when the folks at Williams-Sonoma Inc. started to market a brownie pan in the shape of a chocolate bar, Hershey’s lawyers went to court seeking an injunction to block any further sales.
In a Lanham Act suit filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., Hershey claims that the Williams-Sonoma brownie pan “unlawfully trades on the goodwill and reputation Hershey has established through its use and promotion of that product configuration trademark.”
The suit was filed by attorneys Paul C. Llewellyn and Patricia A. Larson of Kaye Scholer in New York, along with Harvey Freedenberg of McNees Wallace & Nurick in Harrisburg. It was assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge William W. Caldwell.
The Hershey bar design is more than just a rectangle. It is “a chocolate bar that consists of, inter alia, a rectangle containing 12 equally sized rectangular panels arranged in a 4×3 format, with each panel having its own raised borders,” the suit says.
The Williams-Sonoma brownie pan “embodies and mimics” the Hershey bar design, the suit says. …
