Rice is a grain. It is not a shape. Or a vegetable.
That’s the winning case, for now at least, of “Real Rice,” aka, the Arlington-based USA Rice Federation, which filed a request in October to cancel the trademark awarded roughly six years earlier for RightRice, “a tasty new rice grain that’s made from vegetables,” according to its marketing.
“If someone wants to eat cauliflower crumbles, that’s fine,” Robbie Trahan, chair of USA Rice’s domestic promotion committee, said in a release. “But don’t call it ‘rice.’ It isn’t.”
RightRice, which is found on D.C.-based Cava’s fast-casual restaurant menu and sold in supermarkets nationwide, is currently branded as RightRice®, with a rice-shaped mark over the second “i” instead of a dot. The Nov. 29 decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to cancel the trademark means the symbol will have to come off, the federation states, though “rice” can remain — rice is…
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