Alligator Online
By BRETT KELMAN and CHAN TRAN
Who knew selling Alpha-Bits could spell L-A-W-S-U-I-T?
Rocco Monteleone, owner of local business Bowls - A Cereal Joint, didn't. But David Roth of Cereality did.
When Monteleone took the first steps toward making his novel little idea of a café a reality in October of last year, he never thought about competition.
Gainesville had never seen a cereal café.
Other states had though. Roth and his business partner Rick Bacher were the first business owners to sell cereal in a restaurant setting in 2003 with Cereality locations in Arizona, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
While Cereality hasn't patented selling cereal, it is pretty close.
Roth and Bacher have pending business-method patents for six specific elements of how they sell cereal, including "displaying and mixing competitively branded food products" and adding "a third portion of liquid."
If one fly in Monteleone's milk wasn't enough, a third cereal-only café opening in Miami this fall has joined the fray, creating a three-way battle over the cereal fad that threatens to put powerful lawyers to work.
"We knew the idea would be good," Roth said in a phone interview Friday. "This is an idea that has never been done before."
He said Cereality boasts "muscular partners," like Pepsico Inc's/Quaker Oats cereal conglomerate and an alliance with the "Got Milk" initiative. In March, Cereality hired Perkins Coie LLP, the Seattle-based law firm with a focus on lockdown patents that Roth said allow investors to be protective of their original concepts.
"I cannot emphasize enough patent protection," he said.
Cereality representative Lisa Kovitz said Cereality attorneys sent letters to both Bowls and Miami's The Cereal Bowl threatening "serious legal consequences" if they infringe on Cereality's extensive trademark protection.
"Our legal team takes these matters very seriously and will continue to monitor their activities closely to ensure proper results," Kovitz said.
But Monteleone isn't worried.
"Then you wouldn't have McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's," he said. "Or a tattoo place on the corner. Or a barber shop over there."
According to UF law professor and intellectual property expert Elizabeth Rowe, business-method patents are hard to get, consisting of less than 1 percent of all patent applications reviewed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
For a business method patent to be issued, an applicant must prove a need to defend novelty without overly inhibiting competition or innovation.
"I imagine the patent office would take a very, very close look at [Cereality's] application to see if it even met the novelty requirement," she said.
But if issued, Rowe said Roth could use his patents to take the competition to court.
This summer The Cereal Bowl owners wrote Monteleone a letter stating that his restaurant name and logo are violating their trademark.
According to founder and president Kenneth Rader, Monteleone can't use the word "bowl" with the word "cereal."
But once again, Monteleone isn't worried. He said "A Cereal Joint" is just a snazzy phrase on the door. Rader said The Cereal Bowl plans to open in Gainesville in one year. Roth said Cereality would also open locations in Florida but could not confirm a Gainesville location.
Monteleone said college students make Gainesville a prime for cereal cafés. Bowls is a quaint café with a retro style, 33 kinds of cereal, five kinds of milk, coffee, desserts and, eventually, wireless Internet.
"I wanted to start a comfortable hangout kind of place, not like a regular restaurant," he said.