'Tis the (Pumpkin Spice) Season

Ah, pumpkin spice! Every fall, this flavor takes over everything, growing annually from fairly humble beginnings. Pumpkin spice has gone from flavoring the original pumpkin spice latte (PSL) to a wide range of food and beverages, even appearing on cleaners, cosmetics, and more. There's a Squishmallow Pumpkin Spice Latte (Squishmallows are large, squishy, adorable stuffed... well, not animals in this case).

Squishmallows: tasty, very round plush

But does anyone own pumpkin spice? Or some aspects of it?

Yes. There are lots of owned instances of pumpkin spice. A very basic search of the USPTO's newly released beta Trademark Search shows 32 results. Many are dead or abandoned; 9 are not immediately obvious matches; and the use of pumpkin spice varies for types of products and how much of the mark it comprises. I, for one, am glad that someone has decided to abandon some kind of pumpkin spice athletic or sports event service; it sounds like a bad pairing.

WHY?? Who thought it was a good idea?!

Among the pumpkin spice lawyers, martinis, cappuccinos, muffins, ales, armies and milks, I first found a single instance of a registered pumpkin spice latte. And yet, it's for bar soaps. I suppose the pumpkin spice alone wasn't enough, they needed to add a little milk and coffee to the mix for a truly pleasing bar soap... flavor? Read more about this particular instance in the TSDR entry for registration no. 6,468,895. 

Delicious, delicious soap

The next closest was the Pumpkin Spice Latte Run. It's not quite the same as a pumpkin spice athletic event, but it still brought up a few questions. For example, how popular is a running event related to pumpkin spice lattes? After I drink a PSL, I am in no mood to go running, it's a dessert drink. Even if you run before having the beverage, the pairing still makes little sense to me.

Don't drink dessert and dash

A little further investigation reveals that the purpose is to register for the event, run any 5K, and then earn some rewards, which are all PSL related. If you've ever participated in a PSL Run, you'll have to explain it to me in the comments.

...And that's it. I'm honestly a little disappointed to learn that there is so little ownership of PSL on the trademarks side of things. Perhaps I should have looked more at patents, but I imagine that would be even less successful.

Enjoy your PSL while you can. I had a little PSL flavored creamer in my coffee this morning, which I never do, just to get psyched up for this blog entry. Perhaps I'll even splurge on some other PSL product. Recommend the best non-coffee confections!