BATTLE OF THE BANDONS FERMENTS.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

BANDON - Let's be clear about two things:

First, Bandon's Kettle Korn By the Sea does not make cheese.

Second, the Bandon Cheese company does make cheese. But not in Bandon.

Confused? So is David Nevitt. He makes kettle corn out of his house on the outskirts of this coastal town. A few weeks back, he got a letter from the Bandon Cheese Company informing him that the company has trademarked the name Bandon, and that he'd need to make a "content change" in his product - to avoid confusion with Bandon Cheese.

Nevitt does, incidentally, sell kettle corn in the Bandon Cheese retail store on Highway 101. But he doesn't make, sell or distribute cheese, so he was naturally a bit puzzled by the letter. Nevitt marched down to City Hall - which also goes by the name Bandon - and demanded an answer.

"What are they going to do, sue everybody in the phone book who has the word 'Bandon' in their name?" Nevitt wondered.

Turns out, Bandon Cheese marketing director Kathy Holstad also sent a letter to Larry Stotts, of Bandon Coastal Ventures, and to 10 other companies - six outside Oregon, and three within the state.

Stotts doesn't make cheese, either. Nor is he based in Bandon. He lives in Sisters, but rents out vacation homes in Bandon. Still, the cheese company warned that consumers might confuse cheese with vacation homes.

There are more than 60 listings in the phone book for Bandon, from Bandon Quick Mart to Bandon Well & Septic Co. None of them makes cheese. They would appear to have named themselves after the town, which was named after the city of Bandon in Ireland (founded in 1608) - not after the cheese company.

The city is taking the matter seriously, hiring its own trademark lawyer and asking the Coos County district attorney also to investigate.

"It is important to recognize that this issue could have some serious international ramifications," wrote City Manager Matt Winkel in an e-mail to the company, which is owned by the Tillamook County Creamery Association, of Tillamook Cheese fame. "I want to reassure you that no one here claims to `own' the word 'Bandon,' ' Holstad wrote, reassuringly. "In particular, the use of the word in connection with a reference to a geographic locality is without question unobjectionable."

The problem, Holstad explained, is when consumers get confused by more than one vendor offering goods and services under similar brand names. The company also has federally registered the brand "Tillamook," by the way, and sent similar letters to businesses bearing that name.

"We seek to avoid consumer confusion whenever we can," Holstad wrote to Winkel.

City Councilor Geri Procetto finds this concept a bit strange.

"If you go into Bandon True Value, you're not going to ask for cheese," she quipped. "The whole thing is so absurd, it's hard to talk about.

"If we have to trademark our city, we'll trademark our city."

To sort it all out, the city hired local attorney Robert Miller, who has some expertise in trademark law. Here's what he discovered:

The Tillamook County Creamery Association bought Bandon Cheese from local resident Joe Sinko and a partner in 2000. The company then federally registered two trademarks: the words "Bandon" or "Bandon's" and the Coquille River Lighthouse, the town's most eminent symbol. Cheesemakers made cheese. All were happy.

Happy, that is, until the company closed the plant and fired its workers a year ago. Now it makes Bandon Cheese in Boardman and Tillamook.

After the plant became a only retail store, people in Bandon began to have doubts about whether Tillamook could fulfill the legacy of their beloved hometown cheese company, founded as early as 1927. To put the importance of cheese in perspective: There's an entire wall at the Bandon Museum devoted to the subject.

Miller's first task was to figure out whether Bandon businesses would have to drop the word "Bandon," prompting jokes around town that the city would have to rename itself "City of Blank." Then he dug a little deeper.

First, there's the problem of calling it Bandon Cheese, when there's no cheese made in Bandon, Miller says.

The state's Unfair Trade Practices Act forbids labeling that "uses deceptive representations or designations of geographic origin in connection with real estate, goods or services."

Also, when Tillamook filed its federal trademark application, the company claimed that the word "Bandon" and the lighthouse had been used since 1935, which helps make the case that the company deserved a trademark. But the museum's photographs of historical cheese labels show no picture of a lighthouse. As far as Miller can tell, the lighthouse appeared on the label much more recently.

The city of Bandon is asking Coos County District Attorney Paul Burgett to investigate, possibly seeking damages on behalf of local consumers, who may have thought they were buying cheese made in Bandon.

Miller also recommends that the city ask Tillamook to stop using the term "Bandon" to describe its cheese "and correctly label Tillamook's retail store in Bandon as the `Tillamook Cheese Visitor Center.' '

Company officials refused interview requests but agreed to respond in writing to questions submitted in writing.

Company spokeswoman Christie Lincoln reiterated this week that no one claims to own the word "Bandon" and said, "We do not anticipate that it will be necessary to bring suit." In fact, she wrote, all the companies that replied to Tillamook's "letters of inquiry" were told that there's no longer any concern about confusion.

As for the company's label:

"The company is not called Bandon Cheese: The term 'Bandon Cheese' refers to a brand of cheese." It's now produced by the company's "artisan cheesemakers, using the Bandon recipe."

Indeed, in April the company changed its name to Oregon Coast Foods - although the label still reads "Bandon," the store advertises the cheese as "hand-cheddared in Bandon since 1900," and the letters sent to area businesses came from "Bandon Cheese."

Lincoln adds that the company closed the facility because its building and equipment were outdated.

But the company is doing fine.

In a single year, Lincoln said, sales of Bandon Cheese increased from $1 million to $15 million, from 12th in the state to second.

The brand "now stands on its own," Lincoln wrote, "separate from geography. The brand is not a geographic designation of origin."

For now, the company says it only wants Nevitt to change the name of his kettle korn, along with another kettle corn maker whom Nevitt himself has squabbled with about trademarks.

But he isn't worried about the letter. He thinks it's the company that should be concerned. Several people in town have already stopped buying Bandon cheese.

"It doesn't matter how big you are," he said. "If you're not careful, you'll fall."