U.S. Federal Judge Denies Chobani's Motion to Dismiss, Allowing Danone's Cold-Brew Coffee Packaging Trademark Lawsuit to Proceed

Recently, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon denied Chobani's motion to dismiss, allowing Danone's trademark infringement lawsuit over its cold-brew coffee product packaging and tagline to move forward.

Danone filed the lawsuit in July 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that its U.S. yogurt competitor Chobani, through its La Colombe coffee brand, copied the packaging design and tagline of Danone's STōK cold-brew coffee line. In its complaint, Danone alleged that after Chobani acquired La Colombe for $900 million in December 2023, it changed La Colombe's cold-brew packaging from a blue-and-yellow color scheme with the "Bright & Flavorful" tagline to a yellow-and-black color scheme with the "Bright & Mellow" tagline, deliberately mimicking the visual identity of STōK products. Danone had been using the "Bright & Mellow" mark on its STōK cold-brew coffee since January 2021.

In its motion to dismiss, Chobani argued that the words "bright" and "mellow" in "Bright & Mellow" are generic or descriptive terms for coffee flavor and taste, ineligible for trademark protection, and that no reasonable consumer would confuse the two brands.

In her ruling, the judge found that Danone had plausibly alleged that Chobani's use of the yellow-and-black color scheme and the "Bright & Mellow" tagline to sell La Colombe coffee could cause consumer confusion. The judge noted that determinations of genericness, secondary meaning, likelihood of confusion, and fair use are fact-intensive inquiries that are generally not amenable to resolution at the motion-to-dismiss stage.

With respect to whether "Bright & Mellow" has acquired secondary meaning—namely, that consumers associate the phrase with the STōK brand—the judge held that Danone had sufficiently alleged: Danone claimed to have invested "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in advertising and marketing, received unsolicited industry and social media coverage, sold over 16.6 million units generating nearly $100 million in revenue, and that consumers had come to associate the phrase with a single source.

The judge also observed that Danone's allegation that Chobani copied both its packaging and its tagline together was sufficient to support a reasonable inference of intentional imitation, though the judge emphasized that this inference does not constitute a final determination on the merits. The judge clarified that this ruling was purely procedural and did not address the substantive question of whether Chobani had actually committed infringement; the case now proceeds to further stages of litigation.