Not every business can afford to promote their products with excessive branding of all their packaging. This is the reason that many Asian restaurants in my neighborhood use a generic “Delicious Chinese Food” box despite that it’s contents are not necessarily Chinese or delicious. The same is true for the generic pizza box, which often proclaims something like “Fresh Piping Hot Pizza” regardless of whether its fresh or hot.

I saw something new in this realm last week when, after consuming a large amount of truly delicious pizza at a rather anonymous restaurant in Boston’s north end, I asked for a to-go box to take home some remaining slices. The box was not labeled with the name of the restaurant or the box maker, but strangely purported to establish trademark protection in its logo!

I think most trademark lawyers would agree with the USPTO’s one-line definition of a trademark: “A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.”

The maker of this mark is not only allowing, but promoting the mark to be associated with all kinds of different pizza makers. Surely the association of the mark with a particular source is one of the fundamental requirements of trademark protection. What’s the source of this box?