Careful, the cronut is now the Cronut®.
Global copycats trying to mimic the popular doughnuts-and-croissant hybrid that exploded out of a bakery based in New York’s SoHo section last year should consider themselves warned. The US Patent and Trademark office granted a trademark to Dominque Ansel’s International Pastry Concepts LLC on Jan. 14. Ansel’s ownership of the mark covers commercial connections to a myriad of bakery-related items.
Of course, there’s been no shortage of Cronut clones since lines started forming outside Ansel’s Manhattan bakery last spring. The popularity of the pastry gave rise to Swiss Cro-Cremes in Philadelphia, “Doissants” in Washington DC, ”New York Pie Doughnuts” in South Korea, and “Crodoughs,” in Australia. But, according to the US federal government, there is now only one Cronut.