Meghan Markle has received a blow to the future of her lifestyle brand as the United States Patent and Trademark Office has denied her bid to trademark the "American Riviera Orchard" name.
In March, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, soft-launched American Riviera Orchard with a website and Instagram page that featured slick new branding, though no further information about the business or planned product lines was released.
Days before the launch, a holding company connected to the duchess filed applications with the USPTO to trademark the name against a number of goods and services, including homeware, garden accessories, stationery, jams, jellies and preserves.
Meghan promoted the brand in April by sending 50 jars of homemade jam with American Riviera Orchard branding to a number of her celebrity pals, including Chrissy Teigen and Kris Jenner, who then mentioned them to their millions of social media followers.
Now, six months after the soft launch, Meghan's fledgling brand has suffered a blow with its trademark setback.
A nonfinal action filed on August 31 by the USPTO notified Meghan that her application was denied in part because the American Riviera Orchard name is "primarily geographically descriptive."
This means that the primary significance of the mark to consumers is a generally known location, that the goods covered by the mark originate from the geographical location and that "the purchasing public would be likely to believe that the goods or services originate in the geographic place identified in the mark."
"American Riviera," the USPTO said, is already a recognizable term associated colloquially with Santa Barbara, California, which is close to Meghan's home in the A-list enclave of Montecito.
The application was also sent back for other reasons, including that certain goods and services must be rephrased and a needed signature be provided.
Meghan has numerous options to take American Riviera Orchard forward, and the most drastic of these would be to propose a different name.
Newsweek understands that a nonfinal filing, such as the one the duchess received, is routine and expected when applying for trademarks.
In 2023, the USPTO denied Meghan's trademark application for the name "Archetypes," the title of her 12-episode podcast series that aired in 2022. The application failed because the name was too similar to trademarks already in existence.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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