HARTFORD, Conn. -- Nestle's Toll House trademark for cookies has gone the way of aspirin, shredded wheat and monopoly.
U.S. District Judge M. Joseph Blumenfeld ruled Wednesday the Nestle Co., which makes millions of chocolate chips sold for use in cookies, can no longer claim exclusive right to the Toll House trademark.
'Toll House cookie has lost any trademark significance that it may have once had and is now merely a descriptive term for a type of cookie,' Blumenfeld said in a 40-page opinion.
Nestle, which sold 240 million of the tasty chocolate chips for baking last year, sued a Whitman, Mass., eating place known as Saccone's Toll House Restaurant.
The restaurant was selling about 24,000 bags of cookies a week in May 1982 when Nestle's filed a $5 million suit.
Nestle said it purchased the exclusive right to the name more than 40 years ago from the original owner of the Toll House Restaurant, Ruth Wakefield, who invented the chocolate chip cookie.
But Blumenfeld said Toll House has become part of the language, being synonomous with cookie. The word 'tollhouse' was also listed in three different dictionaries as a type of cookie, Blumenfeld noted.
He said Nestle's own marketing survey showed that 'to most consumers, Toll House was associated with a type of product,' and 'not the product of a specific manufacturer.'
The 1979 study showed when women were asked what the words Toll House meant to them, 79 percent replied cookies, and only 9 percent thought of Nestle's.
The company never produced large amounts of Toll House cookies but rather sold the tasty morsel for use in home baking.
'It is apparent that Nestle is the victim of its own phenomenal success in selling chocolate morsels as an ingredient in home made Toll House cookies while failing to market packaged Toll House cookies in any significant number,' Blumenfeld said.
In dismissing the trademark infringement claim, the judge directed the Saccone restaurant to make clear to buyers that its cookies are not associated with the Nestle Co.
Still pending before Blumenfeld are charges of unfair competition and alleged antitrust violations.
Federal law allows the cancellation of a trademark if it becomes the common name for a product.
Other trademarks that have become part of the language over the years include aspirin, cellophane and thermos bottle. Last year, a federal judge decided that Monopoly, the popular board game, was no longer a valid trademark.
