The Agricultural & Food Law
Consortium is a national, multi-institutional collaboration designed to enhance
and expand the development and delivery of authoritative, timely, and objective
agricultural and food law research and information. This information is
available to the nation’s vast agricultural community of producers, attorneys,
state and federal policymakers, Cooperative Extension Service professionals,
and others at the local, state, regional, and national levels.
Agricultural law and food law includes law related to land-based food,
fiber, and energy production systems, as well as seafood and marine-based
aquaculture.
The third annual
report on consumer opinions about “local” food has lots of interesting
information relevant to food hubs and anyone who markets local food. One of the
findings is that consumers don’t buy local food because they don’t know which
products are local. This finding suggests that food hubs and producers could do
more with branding and labeling to identify local food. I see this as an
opportunity to use trademark law for the benefit of local and regional food
systems by creating marks that signify “local” to the relevant community. Such
marks can be valuable intellectual property if used and protected
appropriately.
For example, a food hub’s trademark (e.g., its name or logo)
signifies to consumers not only that products bearing the mark come from the
hub but also that those products come from a particular locality. Of course,
the hub needs to invest in marketing so that consumers will recognize the mark
and know that the hub sources from growers in the area.
Certification marks also are useful tools for identifying
local food. Many states own certification marks certifying that a product is
produced in the state. The purpose of a certification mark is to indicate that
goods meet certain standards. A food hub could operate a certification mark
program for growers in its area to identify their products as local (defined however
the hub sees fit) and, perhaps, as meeting other production and/or quality
standards.
Another possibility, particularly for cooperatively owned
food hubs, is collective marks. A collective mark signifies that a product
comes from a member of a group. Through the group’s marketing, consumers will
come to recognize that products sold by group members are local. From a legal perspective, a food hub should secure its
rights in its trademarks, certification marks, and collective marks by
registering the marks with the US Patent and Trademark Office and by
controlling the use of the marks.
Registration provides nationwide rights in a
mark and helps to prevent other people from using confusingly similar marks.
The owners of trademarks, certification marks and collective marks must control
the use of their marks or else they risk losing all rights in them. Therefore,
it is very important to have licensing agreements with anyone permitted to use
a mark and to not allow others to use a mark (or a similar mark) without such a
license. Licensing agreements need
not be complicated, but they must specify conditions for the use of the
licensed mark.
