Dr Pepper Case

Dr Pepper is the oldest carbonated soft drink in the United States, according to the U.S. Patent Office. The brand, which is now the largest seller of its parent company Dr Pepper Snapple Group, is slowly growing its market share. It is the third largest soft drink company in the United States, but it has very little presence outside the Americas, with most distribution rights elsewhere licensed to its main rivals, the beverage behemoths The Coca-cola Company, and PepsiCo. Dr Pepper has been competing with these companies primarily by offering unique beverage flavors, and a plethora of them. Through a series of lawsuits in the 1990's, Dr Pepper established that it was not a cola, but rather a pepper flavored soda. It was for this reason that

Perhaps the prominent regulation that most everyone is familiar with, is the listing of required nutritional facts about what the product contains. Just navigating the regulations in this environment is often not enough though, companies should be proactive in dealing with possible changes, potentially staving them off in the long run, which is part of the reason that Dr Pepper undertakes so many healthy living initiatives, along with Coke and Pepsi, to encourage consumers to make better decisions, and maybe buy diet product, rather than the company have to comply with the costs of reconfiguring its labels, in a manner that was proposed by the FDA in 2014, which would have required actual column nutritional facts label. In part due to the soda companies efforts, this initiative seems to have lost initiative for the time being. This is likely due to the fact that Dr Pepper does not operate, for the most part, beyond the United

The reason for the lack of patent infringement in a company of this age is that Dr Pepper chose not to patent its famous 23 flavor recipe, but rather to maintain it as a trade secret. This means as long as the company protects the secret, and ensures that, aside from unlawful means, the secret is kept, the company can maintain its exclusivity indefinitely, whereas a patent is limited to twenty years. The trademark infringement most noteworthy, was undertaken by The Coca-Cola Company. Coca-Cola sought to enter the pepper flavored soda market, and introduced a soda named "Peppo," which was determined to be too close to the name Dr Pepper, especially being as the two were in the same flavor category. The name was then changed to "Dr. Pibb," which was also determined to infringe on the trademark of Dr Pepper, and the name was finally changed to "Mr. Pibb," which was allowed to stand, today this product is named Pibb