Meghan Markle was denied registration of her ‘widely hyped’ brand American Riviera Orchard

Last week, Meghan Markle was denied the registration of her brand “American Riviera Orchard,” which she has been struggling to launch. The reason for the denial was a violation of the rule that states a trademark cannot include geographic names or their elements. This was reported by the Daily Mail.

As stated in the official rejection that the Duchess of Sussex received from the USPTO — the United States Patent and Trademark Office — the name of her brand, American Riviera Orchard, is considered to fall under this category. After all, “American Riviera” is a well-known and commonly used name for the coastline in the Santa Barbara area of California.

Moreover, the patent office pointed out some other errors in the registration documents. For instance, the goods that Markle intends to sell under the brand were incorrectly named. Almost all the names are too vague and encompass various groups of products.

For example, when stating her intention to sell kitchen equipment, Prince Harry’s wife did not specify what kind exactly, even though this category could include anything from ladles to complex kitchen appliances. According to the patent office’s rules, this is unacceptable: the documents must list specific types of goods. Now, Meghan will have to redo all the prepared paperwork. How she will resolve the issue with the brand name itself remains unclear.

Critics believe that this situation demonstrates Meghan’s glaring lack of business acumen. And this isn’t the first time this has happened to her. Last year, when she first attempted to submit documents for registering her “American Riviera Orchard” brand, she also filled out the paperwork incorrectly. Then, after sending them to the patent office, she forgot to pay the registration fee.

Last year, she also tried to trademark the name of her podcast, “Archewell,” which she produced for the streaming service Spotify. The refusal to register it was because, as it turned out, a brand with the same name had already been successfully registered by someone else.

Of course, the Duchess of Sussex could have delegated all the technical work to her employees. But, unfortunately, that proved to be impossible. According to Closer Magazine, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are such demanding and tough employers that very few people want to work with them. As a result, even those who get hired often resign shortly afterward.

As far as is known, over the past few years, Harry and Meghan have ‘lost’ around 20 people who no longer wanted to work with them. Now the Duchess is trying to handle everything on her own…