The Vermont artist who created the hand-screened “Eat More Kale” T-shirts has been granted a trademark for the phrase, after a legal struggle with a national fast food chain that alleged an intellectual property violation.
Bo Muller-Moore declared victory Friday during a celebratory news conference on the Statehouse steps, before a crowd of people sporting his T-shirts, sweatshirts and stickers.
When he first applied for a trademark in 2011, he received a cease and desist letter from Chick-fil-A, alleging that his phrase was too similar to its “Eat mor chikin.”
“I do hope that corporations have learned a lesson,” Muller-Moore said Friday. “And I hope that they’re not going to send cease and desist letters as arbitrarily as they once had when they were convinced they were operating in the shadows.”
“They’re not in the shadows any more,” he said. The trademark case caused an outburst of media and public attention as Muller-Moore and others accused the company of corporate bullying. “We have the ability to shine a spotlight on them.”
Muller-Moore said the day after Gov. Peter Shumlin held his first press conference about the battle, he made more T-shirts in one day than he had in the prior year. Shumlin attended the news conference on Friday.
“This is more than just a victory about ‘eat more kale: it’s a victory for ‘grow local,’ it’s a victory for Vermont’s small food and farm agricultural renaissance,” Shumlin said.
Muller-Moore said that on Dec. 9, he received a trademark from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He thanked what he called his “kale team,” which includes the farmer who asked him to make the first T-shirt, the company that gave him a good deal on T-shirts, and his family.
Daniel Richardson, an attorney from Montpelier who represented Muller-Moore, recalled the moment they received the cease and desist letter from Chick-fil-A.
“My first response was to tell Bo, ‘Well, I’m sorry. You don’t fight a billion dollar company with a pro bono attorney.’ But we did. And maybe it was foolishness on both of our parts, but today speaks differently.”
