Trademark Beef: Beyond Meat Hit with $39M Verdict in Lawsuit Over Dunkin’ Ad

Plant-based company Beyond Meat has been found to have infringed a trademark covering a slogan used in a joint ad with Dunkin’, owing $39M in damages.

Beyond Meat can’t seem to catch a break.

In a year when the company’s share price reached an all-time low, became a meme stock, experienced a sustained slowdown in sales, and was forced to bat away bankruptcy rumours, the plant-based meat producer has now found itself on the wrong side of a trademark infringement case.

A jury in Massachusetts has ruled that Beyond Meat owes $38.9M to Sonate Corp, which does business as Vegadelphia Foods, for the use of the slogans “Great Taste, Plant-Based” and “Plant-Based, Great Taste” in an advertisement for the Beyond Sausage sandwich at Dunkin’.

Vegadelphia, which sells plant-based beef and chicken and predates Beyond Meat’s existence by five years, received a federal trademark for its slogan “Where Great Taste Is Plant-Based” in 2015. After the verdict, Beyond Meat said it disagreed with the decision and would appeal.

Jury dismisses Beyond Meat’s claims over trademark use

The case revolves around Beyond Meat’s partnership with Dunkin’ in 2019, which led to the introduction of the Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich on the chain’s menu. Months later, the companies promoted the offering with a commercial featuring American rapper Snoop Dogg and the tagline “Great Taste, Plant-Based”.

However, Vegadelphia claimed that its registered trademark was used without permission, which led to the collapse of talks with two food industry executives that could have valued the company at $100 million within a few years.

“Beyond Meat’s flooding of the market with a virtually identical slogan, well after becoming aware of Vegadelphia’s registered trademark rights, cost its competitor Vegadelphia the perfect expansion opportunity at the height of the plant-based meat boom,” Vegadelphia attorney Ben Wagner, from the firm Troutman Pepper Locke, told Reuters.

The lawsuit was originally filed in Florida in 2022, before being transferred to the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts a year later.

Dunkin’ settled the case with Vegadelphia last year. Beyond Meat, for its part, argued that its slogans wouldn’t cause market confusion and instead “fairly and accurately describe qualities of Defendants’ plant-based products”.

Its attorney suggested that when Beyond Meat discovered Vegadelphia’s trademark, it determined that the use of the two phrases in question was distinct enough to not cause a legal issue.

However, after seven days of testimony in the Boston courthouse, the jury disagreed with Beyond Meat’s claims that the slogans were fair use and sufficiently different. It dismissed the Beyond Burger maker’s assertion that Vegadelphia’s phrase was a “weak mark” with “no commercial strength”, ruling that the Dunkin’ ad would likely confuse consumers.

Tough going for Beyond Meat

Vegadelphia had urged the jury to award it $36.75 million, based on lost profits, the potential value of the business expansion, and other factors. But the verdict exceeded this, granting $23.5M in actual damages for Beyond Meat’s infringement, and another $15.4M in disgorged profits. That amounts to more than half of the company’s Q3 revenue.

“Vegadelphia couldn’t be more grateful that the jury understood the long road and severe damage Beyond Meat inflicted upon one of their competitors,” Wagner told Bloomberg after the judgment.

Beyond Meat has been engaged in several legal battles over the years. In 2024, it settled a class-action lawsuit for $7.5M against claims that it had overstated its products’ nutritional benefits, since the protein digestibility of its meat analogues was lower than that of conventional meat.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, a judge threw out a class-action lawsuit by investors who alleged the company misled them about its manufacturing capacities, leading to artificially inflated stock prices.

Beyond Meat has won a legal dispute against a former co-manufacturer over the termination of a production agreement, with a judge validating its decision to end the deal and denying the latter’s request to reopen the arbitration. At the same time, it is being investigated by a law firm for “potential violations of the federal securities laws”.

The Vegadelphia saga is not over, as Beyond Meat plans to challenge the decision. It comes during a torrid time for the vegan giant, whose sales fell by 14% in the first nine months of the year, compared to the corresponding period in 2024. The company has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs, shuttered its China operations, and diversified into plant protein products that don’t mimic meat.

At the same time, Beyond Meat secured a debt restructuring deal months after raising $100M in debt financing, the largest round for an alternative protein company this year, and boosted its footprint through deals with Walmart and Erewhon in the US and BrewDog in the UK.

Speaking to analysts after posting its Q3 results, founder and CEO Ethan Brown struck a positive tone, while acknowledging the meat alternative category’s challenges. “We are closing out the year with a much improved balance sheet, important transformation spadework underway, and genuine optimism and excitement regarding our future,” he said.