When Chilmark Chocolates closed for good nearly five years ago, owner-managers Allison Burger and Mary Beth Grady intended to retire the company name as well, in tribute to an Island business like no other.
“As we stated upon closing, we wanted ‘to let it stand for what we all worked together to create,’” they wrote to the Gazette last month.
But well before the shop sold its last box of handmade sweets in December 2019, a legal effort was under way to claim the Chilmark Chocolates trademark for a new business.
A New York man has taken over the company name with the apparent intent to sell chocolates, causing dismay among people involved in the original company. Ms. Grady and Ms. Burger wrote to the Gazette and clarified there is no connection to their old shop.
The new patent application included pictures of chocolates.
“While the new business reads ‘established 1984’ and ‘40+ years in business (almost)’, it has no connection other than the name with the business begun by Jan Campbell in 1984 and taken over by a team in September 1985 through 2019,” they wrote.
According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Jason B. Teuscher, of New York, first applied for the trademark in August 2019 — six months after Ms. Burger and Ms. Grady announced they would close Chilmark Chocolates at the end of the year.
In 2020, Mr. Teuscher took legal action, successfully petitioning the U.S. Trademark and Appeal Board to cancel the mark’s original registration. The patent office formally registered Mr. Teuscher’s Chilmark Chocolates trademark last month.
Though Mr. Teuscher’s plans for the business are unclear, a new website (chilmarkchocolate.com) appeared recently. Every page has a logo reading “Est. 1984” along with the statement “Our chocolate is the product of an amazing community of incredible people who are dedicated to crafting an exceptional product that you’ll love.”
There are also various listings for chocolate products, and the home page features a quotation about chocolate that is attributed to Charles Dickens, although it actually is from a 20th-century writer.
Documents filed with the Patent and Trademark Office included pictures of small chocolate squares emblazoned with the name “Chilmark Chocolates,” displayed on a nondescript coffee table or surrounded by tea and pastries.
Attempts to reach Mr. Teuscher’s trademark attorneys at the White Plains, N.Y. firm Mandelbaum Silfin were unsuccessful.
Mr. Teuscher provided the patent office with New York City addresses on Fifth avenue and West 77th street. A New York Times announcement of his 2012 wedding in Chilmark describes Mr. Teuscher as the holder of an international patent for vertical blinds who is an alumnus of Boston University with a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago Executive Program in Singapore.
Chilmark Chocolates founder Jan Campbell said seeing the old brand reused was upsetting and outrageous.
“I can’t imagine anybody who knew and saw what happened at Chilmark Chocolates believing that’s okay to steal,” she said.
Ms. Campbell had been a longtime volunteer at Camp Jabberwocky when she started Chilmark Chocolates. She now works with Tulgey Wood, a similar camp for people with disabilities that was first based on Nantucket and is now located on the Cape. She questioned why the website had a page with logos for both camps and a pledge to contribute to “Martha’s Vineyard Intellectually Challenge[d] Non-Profits.”
“I don’t understand what he’s thinking he will even get out of it,” she said.
Born into a chocolate-making family in New Jersey, Ms. Campbell opened Chilmark Chocolates in 1984 and ran it for a year before deciding to go to graduate school.
“I tried to figure out a way Jabberwocky could take over, but the board was risk-averse,” she said.
Chilmark Chocolates packages up sweets on its last day of business in 2019. — Albert O. Fischer
Ms. Grady and Ms. Burger, whom Ms. Campbell knew from Camp Jabberwocky, were willing to give it a try. They took over Chilmark Chocolates amid the chaos of Hurricane Gloria and went on to become one of the Island’s best-loved establishments, hiring Jabberwocky campers and other Islanders.
With no website, limited mail order and open only 20 hours a week, the little shop on State Road drew lines of customers who filed through the narrow showroom to select their chocolates from long glass cases.
Behind the counter and in the kitchen, Ms. Burger and Ms. Grady maintained an egalitarian workplace, shying away from words like “owners” and “employees.”
“We always stayed focused on our approach, and that was to be a team,” Ms. Grady said in a rare interview last month.
When preparing to close, the two worked with former employees Allison and Sarah Flanders to teach the Chilmark sisters the chocolate-making trade.
“We asked them to make their own story, and it’s theirs,” Ms. Burger said.
Chocolate lovers now line up at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market for candy from the Flanders sisters’ Salt Rock Chocolates.
While taking over a company name is allowed, there were parts of the new Chilmark Chocolates brand that could be problematic in the eyes of the law, according to one trademark expert.
Trademarking a company name is done to prevent customer confusion and preserve a company’s reputation, said Stacey Dogan, a law professor at Boston University and scholar in intellectual property law.
The branding on the new website, claiming the new iteration of Chilmark Chocolates was established in 1984, seemed to falsely suggest it was a continuation of the former, longstanding, respected business, she said.
“That is deceptive advertising if there is no relationship between this new owner and the prior firm,” Ms. Dogan said. “This is exactly the kind of behavior that falsely suggests this new business is a continuation of the old business.”
Ethan Genter contributed to this report.
