San Miguel is a large iconic corporation in the Philippines with a long history. Among its prominent brands are San Miguel Beer and Magnolia Ice Cream…. Unfortunately, an unrelated company in the United States is using the Magnolia brand in the USA.
By: Victor C. Agustin
December 26, 2012
The San Miguel Group is battling a Filipino-American food manufacturer in California, which had beaten it in securing an identical Magnolia trademark in the United States, in order to continue selling Philippine-made Magnolia dairy products in US stores.
August 27, 2015
The “Butter, Margarine and Cheese” (BMC) Issue:
Northern California’s Ramar Foods Has Been Trying For Years to Prevent San Miguel of the Philippines From Using the Magnolia Brand in the United States
The Ninth Circuit Court reverses the injunction entered in favor of Ramar and affirms the balance of the judgment in favor of San Miguel.
San Miguel Corporation, San Miguel Pure Foods Company, Magnolia Inc., Arko Foods International, Inc., and Rayland Enterprises LLC (collectively, “San Miguel”) filed an action against Ramar International seeking a declaratory judgment that San Miguel’s use of the “Magnolia” trademark on certain food products did not constitute trademark infringement.
Ramar counterclaimed against San Miguel for trademark infringement, false designation of origin and false representation, and unfair competition under California law.
The district court granted partial summary judgment in favor of Ramar, concluding that San Miguel’s use of the Magnolia trademark constituted infringement, subject to affirmative defenses. The issues of whether San Miguel’s infringement was willful and whether damages should be awarded were tried to a jury and resulted in a verdict in favor of San Miguel, concluding that the infringement was not willful and awarding no damages. San Miguel also prevailed before the district court on one of its affirmative defenses, the equitable defense of laches, based on Ramar’s delay in objecting to San Miguel’s use of the trademark on butter, margarine, and cheese products (“BMC”) sold in the United States. In the end, San Miguel prevailed for the most part, but the district court did grant Ramar a limited prospective injunction against San Miguel’s use of the Magnolia mark in the United States for food services and products other than the BMC products.
Ramar appealed, challenging the district court’s denial of its motion for judgment as a matter of law as to willful infringement, the jury’s verdict finding no willful infringement, the district court’s judgment in favor of San Miguel on its laches defense, and the BMC exception to the permanent injunction against San Miguel’s use of the Magnolia trademark. San Miguel cross-appealed, disputing the permanent injunction in favor of Ramar.
The Ninth Circuit Court reverses the injunction entered in favor of Ramar and affirms the balance of the judgment in favor of San Miguel.
Download a PDF file of the court’s decision.
Magnolia is a Philippine ice-cream brand whose origins clearly go back to the 1920s. It has belonged to the San Miguel Corporation for most of its history.
IP Philippines Registration No. 42004005904
San Miguel Corporation, Philippines
Source: World Intellectual Property Organization
In the 1970s, a completely unaffiliated Filipino American family in Northern California started marking their own ice-cream products with the “Magnolia” name in order to surf on the goodwill that the original Magnolia had developed among Filipinos from the old country. (This assertion was voiced by U.S. federal judge Richard Clifton himself during oral arguments in Case No. 13-55537.)
The Filipino American family Quesada, operating as the Ramar company, filed a trademark application in the early 1990’s claiming the Magnolia mark for their exclusive use in the United States, based on their use of that name and logo for decades. The fact that San Miguel had been using the Magnolia name and logo for much longer in the Philippines and was the originator of that brand name was irrelevant under U.S. law.
USA trademark serial number: 74297882
Ramar Foods, California, USA
Source: Trademarkia
To this day, many Filipino Americans assume that the Magnolia ice-cream they eat in the United States is related to the Magnolia in the Philippines. It is not.
The U.S. brand name and company logo are strikingly similar to the homeland’s original, but it is California’s Ramar Foods, and not the Philippines’ San Miguel, that’s profiting. Ramar’s rationale behind the appropriation is that San Miguel “did not have the vision to know they could sell to Filipinos here.” In effect, brand-name piracy is considered smart business sense in the United States. It may be unethical, but it’s legal.
In 2005, the Wall Street Journal focused on this particular brand-name piracy issue, in which companies in the United States appropriate trademarks from overseas. The article noted that the trend has been buoyed by U.S. immigrants who favor buying the traditional brands they cherished in their home countries. Not surprisingly, these consumers are quick to assume that a product in the U.S. with a name from home is the product they grew up with. In this case, it is not.