–Dan Kelly, Attorney
What do you think, infringement or not?
vs. 
How about these?
vs. 
No, I did not just learn how to use Photoshop. If you live east of the Rockies, you likely know Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Edy’s ice cream. If you live west of the Rockies, you can’t buy either Hellmann’s or Edy’s. Instead, you can buy Best Foods’ mayo and Dreyer’s ice cream. (Check out the websites–they resolve to different domains for each brand, but are otherwise completely parallel.) To my knowledge, Unilever, who owns the Hellmann’s/Best Foods brands, has no relation to Dreyer’s, who owns the Edy’s and Dreyer’s labels. Each company splits these brands at the continental divide, and each has a different story as to how this came about (one here, the other here).
Moral: the United States is a pretty big country. If through merger or consolidation a company picks up a regional brand with a loyal following, it may pay to have a split personality.