Dairy Queen
Trademark: Dairy Queen
First Used: 1940
Registered: 1962
Current Owner: American Dairy Queen Corporation [1]
Trademark Type: traditional trademark; word mark; design mark; non-traditional trademark; trade dress; configuration mark
Primarily Associated With: ice cream and frozen confections in cone, cup, and bar form [2]
Also A Trademark For: sundaes, strawberry short cake, chocolate bars, ice cream or ice milk cones, ice cream sandwiches, parfait sundaes, and milk shakes [3]; semi-frozen ice cream and ice milk dispenser, walk-in cooler, freezing cabinets, refrigerated mix tanks, ice cream and ice milk shake freezers, and cone racks [4]; fast food and franchising services – namely, rendering technical and promotional assistance in the establishment and/or operation of businesses specializing in the sale of fast foods [5]; and restaurant services, retail soft serve ice milk confectionery store services, and retail ice cream confectionery store services [6]
Brief (and likely incomplete) History [7]:
Summer is officially here! Whether you are craving a DILLY® Bar [8], BUSTER BAR® [9], PEANUT BUSTER® Parfait [10], BLIZZARD® [11], PECAN MUDSLIDE® [12], STARKISS® [13], ARCTIC RUSH® [14], or just a plain old THE CONE WITH THE CURL ON TOP® [15], the Dairy Queen brand has got your back.
In 1938, entrepreneur John Freemont "J.F." McCullough and his son Alex developed a new soft-serve recipe. They believed their new soft-serve recipe was the “queen” of dairy products. After a trial run at a local ice cream shop where 1,600 people showed up in just two hours, they opened the first Dairy Queen on June 22, 1940, in Joliet, Illinois, along historic Route 66. The first store focused just on the basics: there was no indoor seating, a cone cost just a nickel, and sundaes sold for eight cents.
From that single shop, Dairy Queen grew rapidly, expanding to 100 stores by 1947 and opening its first Canadian location in 1953. Along the way, DQ® (also a registered word mark [16]) introduced hot food items under the “Brazier” name in 1957 and later embraced a full-service food concept with the DQ Grill & Chill model of restaurants – the exterior design of which is now a registered non-traditional trademark captured in the DQ Grill & Chill Signage configuration mark [17]. Today, there are more than 6,000 locations around the world. Through it all, Dairy Queen, and its iconic Dairy Queen Logo design mark [18], has stayed focused on serving up sweet treats and simple moments of happiness.
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[1] Dairy Queen, https://www.dairyqueen.com/en-us/.
[2] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 728,894, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72050085&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[3] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 776,277, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72175087&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[4] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 801,849, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72197650&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[5] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 957,999, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72395333&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[6] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,596,949, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=73832576&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[7] About Us, DAIRY QUEEN, available at https://www.dairyqueen.com/en-us/about-us/; The DQ® Story, DAIRY QUEEN FRANCHISING, available at https://www.dairyqueenfranchising.com/about-dq/the-dq-story/; The History of Dairy Queen, NEW YORK DAIRY, available at https://www.newyorkdairy.co/content/the-history-of-dairy-queen; Take a Trip Through Dairy Queen’s History with These Vintage Photos, TASTE OF HOME, last updated on May 5, 2023, and available at https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/first-dairy-queen/.
[8] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 608,408, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=71652510&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[9] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 848,260, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72251395&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[10] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,191,280, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=73240965&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[11] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 5,813,324, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88258375&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[12] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,157,675, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78731981&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[13] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2,764,390, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78180610&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[14] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,204,992, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78492912&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[15] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 952,201, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72385929&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[16] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 978,236, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=72369870&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[17] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 2,618,161, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=76347124&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.
[18] USPTO, U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,476,339, available at https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=73665899&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch.