Imagine listing this as one of a company's major assets:
"A sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with
slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted,
wheat-based dough."
That's something Hasbro can do, certainly now that the US
Patent and Trademark Office has accepted the company's trade
mark application for the smell of its Play-Doh product. Hasbro has
apparently been using this scent since 1956, and it's managed
to persuade the US authorities that the scent serves a trade mark
function, in that it identifies and distinguishes the product. But
what does this really mean? Well, it means that the company now has
the exclusive right to use the particular fragrance – as well
as fragrances that might be confusingly similar to it –
certainly in relation to the goods that are specified in the
registration, and possibly also in relation to other goods.
