Buzz
If you browse any grocery store’s cereal aisle, you'll notice an abundance of O-shaped cereals. From generic supermarket O’s to Trader Joe’s O’s, Kosher for Passover Crunch-i O’s, 365 Organic Morning O’s, and the quintessential Cheerios. With so many variations of the classic General Mills cereal, you might assume that the company would have sought to trademark its iconic design, halting other brands from producing what is essentially their product.
Created in 1941 and initially known as Cheerioats (until a competitor's lawsuit forced a name change to avoid confusion with other oat cereals), Cheerios was the first oat-based cold cereal to hit the market. As noted in General Mills' anniversary book, 75 Years of Innovation, Invention, Food & Fun, the company experimented with over 500 formulas and “more than 10 shapes and sizes ... before researchers discovered the perfect formula.”
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America notes that the original puffed rice manufacturing process was developed by Dr. Alexander P. Anderson in 1902. In the 1940s, General Mills' Mechanical Experimental Department engineer, Thomas James, created a new version of the puffing gun. According to General Mills' blog, corporate archivist Susan Wakefield attributes much of the company's success to the puffing gun and its upgraded models, including the C-gun in the 1960s and the E-gun in the 1980s.
Despite the innovative technology at their disposal, General Mills never attempted to trademark the iconic O shape, according to the company’s archives department. (At the time, trademark laws were still in their infancy, which explains why no one thought to rush to a lawyer the moment Cheerios debuted.)
However, had Cheerios been introduced after the passing of the Lanham Act in 1946, would General Mills have had a stronger case for trademarking the shape?
In an email, Oliver Herzfeld, SVP and Chief Legal Officer at the brand licensing agency The Beanstalk Group, clarified that product shapes can indeed be trademarked—but only if the shape is not a functional feature of the product itself. (As Kath, a nutrition food blogger whose post about homemade toasted oat cereal was sponsored by General Mills, points out, “they would have been fine without the hole!”) Additionally, the shape must meet the trademark law’s distinctiveness requirements. Herzfeld elaborated on this, explaining that historically, trademark protection was not granted to product shapes until the public—specifically, those shopping in the cereal aisle—recognized the shape as a sign of the product's source.
Take, for example, the classic Coca-Cola Contour Bottle, which was granted trademark status in 1977. The hobbleskirt bottle, as it’s also known, serves no functional purpose (it doesn’t even make it easier to hold!), but it is strongly tied to the Coca-Cola brand. In contrast, the round Cheerio could be linked to the letter O, or perhaps the ancient inventor of the wheel.
In short, Herzfeld doesn’t believe General Mills would have had a strong case for trademark protection. It’s a bit disappointing, considering how much fun it would be to have every cereal on the shelf in a different shape. Or perhaps we’d have fewer cereals overall. Either way, General Mills' choice—or lack of one—to not trademark their now-famous O’s was a win for all of us.
