Daily Archives: September 24, 2015

Remember Hydrox Cookies?  Well, they’re ba-a-a-ck.

On Wednesday (9/23) Ellia Kassoff of Leaf Brands was interviewed on WNYC on how he obtained the Hydrox trademark so he could relaunch Hydrox Cookies.

Hydrox was trademarked by the Sunshine Company that first made Hydrox Cookies over a hundred years ago. Kassoff discovered that Kelloggs owns the trademark and did something private investigators who specialize in IP do all the time: he called the company and spoke to a customer service rep, who told him Hydrox Cookies had been discontinued and there were no plans to bring the product (or its trademark) back into commerce. Kassoff wrote to the USPTO and the mark was declared abandoned.

Kassoff’s company, Leaf Brands, now owns the mark. Kassoff will be going head-to-head with Oreo Cookies. That will be quite a feat. Worldwide one in 20 cookies sold is an Oreo. Oreo Cookies got a big write up in this week’s New York Magazine (See: “Treats: The Oreo Boom”). Oreo sales are up 60 percent over the past decade and exceed $2.5 billion. Hydrox’s marketing pitch will center on its not using corn syrup.

Operation Red Zone was the largest seizure of sports-related apparel in history; a nationwide enforcement operation which began in September, 2012 and concluded six months later, with seizures of professional sports apparel and souvenirs amounting to $17.3 million in MSRP–196,333 items including fake jerseys, ball caps, T-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts. Sports jerseys accounted for nearly 29 percent of all seized counterfeits.

Special agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and state and local police departments around the country worked in partnership with the NFL and other major sports leagues during the operation.

Operation Red Zone not only targeted international shipments of counterfeit merchandise as it entered the United States, but also focused on warehouses, stores, flea markets, online vendors and street vendors. 168 counterfeit tickets for the SuperBowl were also seized with an MSRP of more than $154,000. Forty-one individuals were arrested nationwide during the operation including six federal and 35 state and local arrests