The freezer aisle just got bloodier. On August 28, 2026, U.S. District Judge John R. Adams in the Northern District of Ohio denied Trader Joe’s motion to dismiss J.M. Smucker’s trademark and dilution claims over frozen crustless peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Smucker’s Uncrustables—the round, crimped, bite-marked icon that has sold roughly 1.5 billion units a year and is racing toward a billion-dollar brand—accused the grocery chain of launching an “obvious copycat.”
Trader Joe’s product is a crustless PB&J sold in packaging that features a sandwich with a bite taken out, revealing the filling. Smucker says the shape, the undulated crimping around the edge, the blue-toned carton, and the bitten-sandwich imagery all trade on two decades and more than a billion dollars of Uncrustables goodwill. Trader Joe’s answer: its sandwiches are not round at all. They are “squircles”—squares with rounded corners—and the crimping is functional, necessary to keep the filling inside. The company also insisted that a sandwich’s appearance is no Nike swoosh or McDonald’s arches, so fame for dilution purposes could not be pled.
Judge Adams disagreed. He found Smucker had alleged enough about advertising, sales volume, registration status, and consumer recognition to let the federal dilution claim survive. Venue stayed in Ohio. The case now heads toward discovery and a case-management conference in mid-October.
This is not a counterfeit raid. It is a pure lookalike fight over product configuration and trade dress. The junior product sits on the same shelves, uses the same visual cues that make a hurried parent grab the familiar shape, and invites the exact mix-up trademarks exist to prevent. Smucker is seeking an injunction, destruction of packaging, restitution, and damages. If the claims stick, Trader Joe’s faces a forced redesign, inventory write-downs, and the cost of explaining to shoppers why the familiar round sandwich suddenly changed shape.
Exact copies are rare. The real damage is the one-letter shift, the phonetic twin, the packaging that feels familiar at a glance. A squircle is close enough that a federal judge refused to throw the case out at the pleading stage. That is the crime scene.
What the sandwich already cost
Offices do not police relative grounds on their own. Opposition windows close in weeks, not years. Once a lookalike is on the shelf and registered, the fight moves to federal court, expert surveys, and seven-figure discovery. Failure to watch the register is how rights weaken: dilution, customer mix-ups, blocked expansion, a worse story at due diligence. Watching the register is cheaper than a freezer-aisle rebrand. The work of watching a mark exists for moments exactly like this.
The only cheap moment is before the lookalike hardens. The Uncrustables shape was already someone else’s problem before it became Trader Joe’s.