Honestly, it’s a dispute that has gotten out of hand.
The Canadian blogger behind the wildly popular “Honest Toddler” Twitter feed has gotten into a grown-up tantrum with a cleaning products company co-founded by Hollywood actress, Jessica Alba.
The argument is about who has the right to use “honest” in their names, and no one is more surprised by how complicated the tussle has gotten than Honest Toddler’s “mommy,” Bunmi Laditan.
“In May of 2012, when I started the Twitter account, I would not have predicted that I would be in this position at all,” the mother of three from the Montreal suburb of Vaudreuil-Dorion told CTV’s Canada AM Wednesday.
Honest Toddler, to its 250,000 or so fans, is the name of a hilarious Twitter feed offering the wry musings of a fictional toddler fed up with broken crackers and mommy-imposed timeouts.
But to The Honest Company, a California-based purveyor of non-toxic baby and cleaning products co-founded by Alba, Honest Toddler represents a threat.
Last September, after being offered a book deal by publisher Simon & Schuster, Laditan applied for a trademark on Honest Toddler with the U.S. Patent Trademark Office. In April, the trademark office granted Laditan preliminary approval, saying that Honest Toddler’s trademark was not confusing with any current trademarks.
That’s when The Honest Company stepped in. They contacted Laditan to discuss the name. At first, it seemed the two sides had negotiated and come to a deal over their names, with Laditan begin asked to sign an agreement not to make any products similar to those offered by The Honest Company.
But Laditan says things changed when the company subsequently asked her to cancel her application. The Honest Company said it needed to “protect its business and valuable trademarks” and wanted Laditan to instead license the name through them.
Laditan wasn’t interested.
“They have been saying that they tried to resolve it. By trying to resolve it, they have asked me to cancel my trademark application. That’s the only thing they have ever offered so far. They said they would license it back to me for 365 days from the time of signing and then I would be done with it. And to me, that’s not resolving; that’s asking me to give up what I’ve worked on,” Laditan told Canada AM.
To Laditan, the whole trademark fight makes no sense, since there is no reason why fans of her Twitter feed, her blog (TheHonestToddler.com), and her Honest Toddler book would confuse her “brand” with The Honest Company’s products.
“Many companies operate successfully with similar names,” Laditan wrote earlier this week on her personal blog.
“For example, have you ever bought Ritz crackers expecting to be making a hotel reservation at Ritz hotels? Of course not. Consumers can differentiate between different companies that both use the word ‘honest’.”
Laditan adds that the squabble was made even more confusing last September, when The Honest Company actually featured an “interview” of her and Honest Toddler on their blog. She thinks that was an odd decision if The Honest Company is now claiming it’s worried that consumers could confuse the two brands.
“The Honest Company contacted me; they wanted to feature me on their website. They said I was hilarious. That link is still on my website where they featured me. Now they’re claiming I’m bringing confusion to the marketplace by using a word that is extremely common – honest,” she said.
Laditan says she’s had to spend her own money to hire a lawyer to fight the copyright battle. And now she’s angry that The Honest Company decided this week to us its honesttoddler.com domain to launch what she says is a ”tirade” against her refusal to withdraw her trademark application.
Laditan says she’s not backing down, because she now has to defend her own reputation.
“They’ve told hundreds of thousands of people that I’m difficult to work with, that I’ve flip-lopped all over the place and changed my mind. I’ve had to defend my character,” she explained.
“I’m in a position where I can start another blog, I can start over with a different name but I can’t start over as a different person and I have to correct that now. Because I have not been difficult to work with.”
While the trademark fight continues, Laditan is also working on turning The Honest Toddler into a TV show, working with Darren Star, the producer of Sex and the City, who recently optioned the rights to The Honest Toddler.
