Likelihood of confusion? Uh, yeah.

According to a blog post by William Breathes on Denver Westword (full story here), candy giant Hershey has settled its trademark infringement case against Colorado cannabis-edibles producer TinctureBelle.

This is the kind of stuff that got Hershey's attention:

Apparently, TinctureBelle changed its packaging fairly dramatically, so, for example, Hashees peanut butter cups now come in a package with this label:

Now, as you know, trademark infringement centers on "likelihood of confusion."  Is the ordinary consumer going to mistake the allegedly infringing product for the real McCoy?  Often, this kind of thing is proved in court by providing results of surveys that show that consumers are confused.

This case raises a number of interesting questions in connection with surveys.  If you're going to prove likelihood of confusion for this kind of product, do you need to survey people who are going to use the product?  Who are, likely, already high?  Does the standard for "likelihood of confusion" change if the consumers in question are already confused, just generally?  How do you normalize for the munchies?

In any event, now that they've settled with Hershey, TinctureBelle only has to worry about Disney.