Plano-based Cookies by Design sued over smiley-face sweet

Depending on how the cookie crumbles, a Plano company may not be all smiles.

Eat’n Park, a Pennsylvania bakery and restaurant chain, says it has caught Plano-based Cookies by Design selling smiley-face cookies that it says are “confusingly similar” to its own.

And it’s suing.

Eat’n Park says it has a trademark from 1987 for the “sugar cookie having raised design of a smiling face.” In its lawsuit filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania on Dec. 31, the company asks that Cookies by Design stop selling its version of smiley cookies and pay an undisclosed amount of dough in damages.

A key ingredient of Eat’n Park’s case is the lawsuit’s Exhibit A, which shows a circle with two round eyes, a dot for a nose and a perky smile.

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Here’s the Eat ‘n Park Smiley cookie

and here’s the Cookies by Design cookie:

At the beginning of the school year I usually send WifeGeeding and her team a cookie bouquet from a local store.  I just looked up smiley faces on their website to see how close they could be to being sued.

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Bag of Randomness

  • I thought it was pretty cool that Keith Jackson got to do the coin toss last night.  And I appreciated his words right before the toss, even if they were hard to hear.
  • Not sure who I feel sorry for more, Colt McCoy getting hurt in his last college game, or his true freshman backup being thrown into the national championship game.
  • Congrats, Bama.
  • The Rose Bowl Stadium is something special, isn’t it?
  • As I mentioned earlier, I would take a Longhorn loss for a Cowboy win.
  • Craig James has confirmed he is interested in replacing Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson when she steps away from her senate seat.  Man, that’s quite a surprise, and I wonder just how much the whole Texas Tech fiasco is going to influence votes should he actually run.
  • Man, there sure are some crazy rumors regarding Jay Leno.  It appears that after the Winter Olympics, he might be back in his old time slot, and I have no idea what that will mean for Conan or Fallon.
  • I’d feel more comfortable with the Tea Party movement if they were more vocal when the size of government and its debt grew tremendously during the last administration.
  • You may remember the movie critic Roger Ebert.  He can no longer eat or drink, and has recently written about it.  Quit interesting.
  • The new cast has been announced for Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains.  This could be the best season ever.  The only person I want to see that isn’t part of the cast is Terry, the Captain America former fighter pilot from Survivor Panama.
  • I’ll bet the entire house that the Cowboys will keep the roof closed this Saturday night.
  • Mark McGwire will play next year?
Posted in Goofy | 4 Comments

Grieving Family Gets Brain of Dead Relative Sent to Them by Funeral Home

A New Mexico family is suing two funeral homes after their deceased relative’s brain was included in a bag of her personal effects.

“A brain is not what you’d expect with the return of personal effects, which included the clothing she was wearing at the time of her death and the jewelry she had on,” said Richard Valle, the New Mexico-based attorney representing the family, only identified by initials in the lawsuit.

The family did not want to be named in order to “minimize disruption” to their lives, according to the court documents. They declined requests for an interview.

The dead woman reportedly died in a car crash in Utah in September.

Valle said that sometime during the process of transporting her body from Utah to New Mexico for burial, her brain was put in a plastic bag, labeled “brain” and later given to the family.

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Free Chick-fil-A sandwich for wearing a seat belt

The cows want you to eat more chicken — and so do the police in some parts of South Carolina. At least that’s the enticement they’re using during the holidays to encourage drivers to use their seat belts.

You might still get a ticket for speeding, but you could also get a ticket for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties if you have your seat belt on at the time of the infraction.

If the program catches on, it could go statewide, said Lance Cpl. Bob Beres, a spokesman for the Highway Patrol.

South Carolina is one of at least 12 states — including Washington, Connecticut, Nevada, Kansas, Missouri, Vermont, Utah, Kentucky, North Dakota, Minnesota and Maryland — using giveaways ranging from fast food to cash to charm drivers into buckling up.

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