A lot of us really hoped that the Duchess of Sussex would drop some kind of American Riviera Orchard product line before Christmas, so we could support ARO and Meghan by buying those products as gifts. But it’s not going to happen. Or at least, it’s probably not going to happen in 2024. It looks like Meghan is still dealing with the bureaucracy of launching a brand, and her lawyers have asked for an extension from the trademark office.
The Duchess of Sussex has asked officials for three more months to get her lifestyle brand up and running. Lawyers for the Duchess, 43, have requested an extension in her attempt to trademark her commercial venture American Riviera Orchard.
It comes after her initial application to trademark the name was refused by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in September, after which she was given three months to address the issues or face having the application dropped.
She has now asked for a further three-month extension to address the filing issues for her brand, which will promote a domestic idyll through the sale of jams, nut butters and home goods. If the next deadline is missed, the Duchess will have to start the application process again with the USPTO, which rejected the first try after noting that businesses cannot trademark geographical locations.
It said that American Riviera was a “common nickname” for Santa Barbara, the California city where Prince Harry and Meghan reside, and argued the addition of the word Orchard “does not diminish the primarily geographical descriptiveness of the applied for mark”.
The Duchess had already soft-launched her brand with a slick video and a website created on March 14 that remains a holding page inviting supporters to join a waiting list that keeps them updated about “products, availability and updates”.
It’s been years of the British media trying to make “trademark issues” into a global scandal. But this time, I actually think there’s something interesting going on – it really does not feel like ARO is anywhere close to launching. It really does not feel like ARO will have anything to sell whenever Meghan’s cooking show comes out, which will probably be in January or February? Unless this is all a feint and Meghan will come out with everything all at once whenever her Netflix show debuts?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.