Company Wants to Trademark Pizza Scent

Company Wants to Trademark Pizza Scent

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - The aroma of a freshly baked pizza is arguably as universally recognizable as that of a newly mowed lawn or a fresh cup of coffee.

But a Lithuanian restaurant chain now wants the intellectual property rights for the scent in the small Baltic nation, saying it is closely associated with its pizza pies.

"Opinion polls show that many consumers in Lithuania identify the pleasure of eating pizza with our trademark," said Mindaugas Gumauskas, marketing director of the Cilija company. "This makes us believe that the scent of freshly baked pizza is a subject to our copyright."

Cilija, which owns dozens of pizza parlors in Lithuania and neighboring Latvia, has asked the national patent bureau to register the intellectual property rights of the scent. The agency did not comment on the trademark request.

If the request is granted, it does not mean that other pizzerias would have to stop making the oven-baked dish, but only Cilija would be able to make the claim that its food smells like freshly baked pizza.

Competitors say the idea stinks of unfair business practices and that Cilija is just looking to make more dough.