People are so cuckoo for the confections that they're devouring cupcake cookbooks, cupcake-shaped jewelry and anything else adorned with the cute concoctions.
In Southern California, Sprinkles has spawned a wave of imitators, including Dots Cupcakes in Pasadena, Yummy Cupcakes in Burbank and Frosted Cupcakery in Long Beach.
Jones said she had been baking cupcakes "underground" for almost three years and delivering them to Montecito, including to the wedding-rehearsal dinner this summer of former "Bachelor" star Andrew Firestone and his model bride, Ivana Bozilovic. But with three kids and twice-weekly commutes from Bakersfield to Montecito, Jones decided to move once she had built up the clientele to open a storefront.
Her sweet shop is dripping in hot pink, and her $3.50-a-pop cakes have whimsical names such as Peanut Butter Yumptious and Whipple Scrumptious. They're stuffed with cookie dough and peanut butter cups and are "ooey-gooey yummy," Jones said.
Sprinkles, on the other hand, has a sleek, modern look. Its $3.25 cupcakes are frosted smooth, with sparse embellishments -- only sprinkles or coconut -- and the modern dot. The texture is more cake- or muffin-like, with frosting so popular the store sells it by the shot.
"If anyone had ever been to Sprinkles, they would never mistake my store or my cupcakes," Jones said.
That's what the owners of Famous Cupcakes in North Hollywood said, too, after Sprinkles sued them last month for using dots in their packaging and decor.
According to Slafsky, all the "sprinkles" and "dots" affiliated with cupcakes are leading to "marketplace confusion" for hungry consumers.
Doug Lichtman, a UCLA law professor who specializes in intellectual property, said "any business is able to protect the exclusivity of marks that genuinely identify the business." The question is whether Sprinkles can lay claim to a word that is commonly used in the context of frosting and whether the dot truly sets Sprinkles apart.
"It might be that, from the perspective of a cupcake customer, the 'modern dot' simply looks like one of several traditional allocations of frosting," he said. "That might make the mouth water, but it would on that assumption not warrant legal protection."
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kimi.yoshino@latimes.com
