Jerkymaker gets to keep Tillamook name

PORTLAND – There’s room for two Tillamook businesses in the Oregon coastal county of the same name, according to a recent federal ruling.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman ruled that both Tillamook Cheese and Tillamook Country Smoker will be allowed to continue using “Tillamook” in their business logo.

The ruling is a victory for the smoker, which since 1975 has sold jerky under the name of the Salish Indian tribe, a name that has become an integral part of Oregon’s geography, adorning a county, a river, a forest and a town. But the cheesemaker – by far the larger of the two operations – had asked for an injunction against the jerkymaker, saying the name belonged to the creamery alone.

Mosman disagreed in a ruling issued Friday and will allow the smoker to register the words “Tillamook Country Smoker” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Earlier, the judge ruled that although the creamery had registered the “Tillamook” name in 1921 – more than five decades before the smoker even existed – it had failed to assert its ownership over the trademark once the smoker began using it.

According to court documents, the smoker and creamery, located three miles apart in Tillamook County, had been business partners for years.

In 2001, the creamery bought more than $635,000 of Tillamook Country Smoker products to market in its store. The creamery’s catalogue referred to the smoker’s products as “our” beef jerky and “our” sausage. It also included a toll-free number through which customers could buy the jerkymaker’s products, court documents revealed.

The judge’s argument against the creamery boils down to a case of “if you had a problem, you should have said something earlier,” said Peter Staples, attorney for the smoker.

“In the meantime they built up name recognition. It’s not fair to deprive them of that value. Imagine if Coca-Cola had to stop using Coca-Cola,” Staples said.

Had it lost the right to use the name, the smoker would have been forced to destroy nearly $3 million in inventory of boxes, plastic wrappers and other packaging, all embossed with the Tillamook logo.

The creamery’s attempt to stop the smoker from using the name had enraged locals, including numerous other business owners who were asked to drop the name, including a coffee shop selling “Tillamook coffee,” a bird-feeding business using the name “Tillamook Peanut Bugger” and a young couple who grew artichokes in their back yard under the name “Chokes from Tillamook.”

Only Tillamook Country Smoker, listed among the top 10 jerkymakers nationwide, could afford the fight.

“There’s a Tillamook County. There’s a Tillamook Bay. There’s a Tillamook River. There’s a Tillamook Avenue – and on and on and on,” said Dick Crossley, co-owner and founder of the smoker. “This whole issue has given our community a black eye.”

In a prepared statement, the creamery’s president and CEO, Jim McMullen, said that the company’s attorney had not yet reviewed the ruling. “We’re not prepared to give our board of directors and management an analysis of the decision,” he said.

In earlier court filings, the creamery had argued that the smoker’s name was causing confusion in the marketplace.

Officials with the cheesemaker, which last year sold 93 million pounds of cheese totaling $260 million in sales, argued that they waited until 2000 to object to the smoker’s use of “Tillamook” because that was when they began receiving correspondence showing consumers were confused about whether the creamery also made the jerky. Before 1999, they only received two such letters. By 2000, the correspondence had ballooned to 48. In 2001, it received 93 such contacts. And by 2002, the year litigation began, it had grown to 106.

But the judge noted that the significant increase in contacts indicating confusion occurred at about the same time the creamery inaugurated its Web site, which increased contact with consumers overall. Kathy Holstad, the creamery’s brand manager, also acknowledged that much of the correspondence was from customers following up on purchases of the smoker’s products – which they had made earlier through the creamery’s factory store or through its catalogue.

The name “Tillamook” was first recorded in the journals of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who reached the area in 1806, said Richard Engeman, public historian for the Oregon Historical Society.