Are There Any Legal Issues Involved in Selling Portland Water in Cans?

Last week, someone asked about Portland tap water being canned for sale. What about the legal issues involved? Do they have permission to use the PDX carpet? Plus, a battle was waged to stop Nestlé’s bottling water in Cascade Locks—why is this company allowed to do the very same thing from Portland faucets? —NE PDXer

With all due respect, PDXer, the entire point of last week’s column was that the product being sold as “Portland Water” is NOT Portland tap water, it’s well water from Central Oregon, and thus does NOT come from Portland faucets. Granted, that fact didn’t appear until about halfway through, but this is a 400-word humor column, not Infinite Jest—do people really not make it to the end? It’s like finding out people fall asleep in the middle of TikTok videos.

Even if the Portland Water people WERE bottling water from Portland faucets, though, they’d be in the clear. Municipal water finds its way into lots of consumer items—soda, beer, soup—with no prior legal arrangements needed beyond paying the water bill. (Nestlé’s scheme involved spring water intended for an Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife salmon hatchery, not city water. If they’d been willing to settle for the stuff from the tap, they might have gotten away with it too, meddling kids notwithstanding.)

The Portland Water folks are also innocent when it comes to the PDX carpet. That reference may be a little dated (perhaps the company’s next promotion will involve freezing their product for the Ice Bucket Challenge), but the famous PDX carpet pattern isn’t copyrighted, so it’s fair game, and indeed has been used by a number of products over the past decade.

What about the use of “Portland”? Well, geographical names are generally considered generic terms and are therefore up for grabs—see Portland Brewing, Portland Coffee Roasters, et al. It might be tough to trademark a name like “Portland Water,” but for that very reason it’s not infringing on anyone’s trademark to use it. Strike three for the naysayers!

It’s true, of course, that under U.S. trademark law, a company can be liable if someone can show evidence that their use of a place name creates consumer confusion about a product’s source. This one could in theory be problematic, especially since the question above seems to constitute just such evidence. Luckily, nobody reads all the way to the end of these things.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.