King's Hawaiian settles lawsuit over sweet roll packaging

Lawsuit alleged infringement of intellectual property rights

King's Hawaiian has announced that it has settled a lawsuit over packaging that the company claimed infringed on its intellectual property rights.

The lawsuit was filed against Minnesota-based Pan-O-Gold Baking Company. The lawsuit alleged that Pan-O-Gold had infringed upon King's Hawaiian's intellectual property by using packaging similar to the orange packaging King's Hawaiian uses on its dinner roll packages. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but Pan-O-Gold will be changing its packaging as a result of the settlement.

"We believe our packaging trade dress is distinctive and famous," says John Linehan, King's Hawaiian President and Chief Strategy Officer. "The King's Hawaiian packaging is a very valuable asset to King's Hawaiian and we have assembled an excellent legal team to protect and to enforce our intellectual property rights in the trade dress. We have invested a significant amount of time and resources and it is our intent that this team will vigorously pursue any infringement to our trade dress any time it occurs, in any location it occurs and at any cost."

The case is King's Hawaiian Holding Company, Inc., et al. v. Pan-O-Gold Baking Company, Inc., case number 1:17-cv-06443, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. King's Hawaiian has settled multiple similar lawsuits in recent years.

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Casey Laughman is the former Editor in Chief of Food Engineering magazine. He has almost two decades’ experience as a writer and editor for mainstream and trade publications. He spent several years as a writer and editor for two news services before becoming the editor of a legal publication and managing editor of a trade magazine that covered the commercial facilities market.