Mānuka Trademark Evidence Files — ‘Let Me Tell You a True Story’
Evidence submitted by Mānuka Charitable Trust (MCT) to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the mānuka honey certification trademark case contains promotional website texts that propagate common fictions and have been flagged as generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
The US case is moribund following a suspension notice that USPTO issued to MCT on 31 July. The evidence file in question was submitted 9 July. This report analyses that evidence, the last such to be presented to USPTO before further action on the trademark application was suspended. The application itself was filed 11 December 2024.
The 9 July evidence filing was the second such made by MCT following a 141-page submission made 10 December 2025. Such filings are made in response to the USPTO examiner’s requests for clarifications or additional information.
In a letter accompanying the evidence file, MCT’s US attorney explained to the examiner: ‘MANUKA is not a geographically descriptive term; there is no geographic area known as “MANUKA” in New Zealand. That said, “MANUKA” does indicate New Zealand. See Exhibits A-E.’ Let’s browse those five exhibits, which are all website printouts bundled into an unindexed, 59-page PDF document.
Exhibit A: Martha Stewart
Exhibit A is printed from the eponymous website of Martha Stewart, who founded a publishing and lifestyle brand empire and became a TV celebrity. Her empire and reputation floundered when she was sentenced to prison for a felony conviction for insider share trading. Stewart, now age 85, emerged from prison to resuscitate and sell her business.
“CANADA DRY — a vibe shift in a glass” is the advertisement atop the first printout from the entry for manuka honey on marthastewart.com. This ad appears below a tagline of “Top Stories ꟾ Best Chicken Lemon Recipes ꟾ What Sourdough Does to Your Body”. The page title is, “The Benefits of Manuka Honey — And Why It’s So Expensive”.
The “Distinctions” section can be expected to interest trademark examiners. “…Leptospermum (the tree and flowers) stands out because of its specific…” (we turn the page to find the next line or lines cut out) …”and freshness,” the author says. Three pages of recipe ratings follow — 3 out of 5 stars for “Carrots with ginger and honey”.
Exhibit B: Primal and Robotic
EXHIBIT B is a printout from the webstore of UMF Honey Association (UMFHA)-certified brand “Primal by Nature”. We see the subject title “Exploring the Cultural Significance of the Mānuka Tree” underneath “OVER $100NZD ꟾ GENUINE MANUKA HONEY ꟾ NOTHING ADDED NOTHING TAKEN AWAY”, which is a horizontal news ticker segment frozen in a screenshot.
Bee-on-mānuka flower and product photos bookend text that shows AI authorship characteristics — repetition, disjointedness, the structure “This isn’t that. This is sometime else”, and a robotic touch. One example: “The Mānuka tree isn’t just a botanical specimen - it’s deeply intertwined with New Zealand’s national identity - embodying the very essence of the country’s natural beauty, resilience and cultural heritage.”
AI also gets caught in an oral history trap, where myth poses as evidence, and becomes too trusting, as in this example: “In Māori folklore, the manuka tea tree was considered a gift from the gods — containing healing powers to protect the people. The honey produced from its nectar was believed to carry the same divine properties and was thought capable of curing illnesses and warding off evil spirits.” Leave a comment.
(Entries in websites of the Encyclopedia of New Zealand and NZ History detail the introduction of European honeybees in the 1840s. Native species of bees do not produce honeycomb. The two words in Māori for honey — honi and mīere — are borrow words from English and French.)
Exhibit C: ‘Hailing From the Nectar’
EXHIBIT C is excerpted from the Aseanz.net website, which serves as a billboard for a Levin-resident business consultant. The consultant champions the application of AI to “business process outsourcing” or BPO. “AI-powered data analytics tools can…extract meaningful insights faster than manual methods”, one snippet of advice assures.
The excerpt is titled, “New Zealand’s Liquid Gold: An Introduction to Manuka Honey.” From low brow to toe, it reads as AI exhaust. It opens with, “Manuka honey…is more than just a sweet indulgence. It represents a blend of tradition, quality, and innovation that sets it apart from other types of honey. Hailing from the nectar of the native Manuka tree, this unique honey has become the symbol of New Zealand’s natural heritage.”
And: “Long before its modern fame, the Māori utilised Manuka Honey for its medic (sic) qualities, treating wounds and digestive issues. The Manuka tree itself was revered for its healing properties, and the honey harvested from its blossoms became an integral part of Māori traditional medicine".
Mānuka honey is a “staple in many Kiwi households” and the “preferred choice among New Zealanders”, the printout states. The volume of honey of all types consumed in New Zealand is guessed or unknown. Even when sold in New Zealand, much of the mānuka volume is taken out of the country by international visitors, as Comvita wrote as early as August 2002.
One text segment is headlined “Why Mānuka Honey Is So Expensive ꟾ So Expensive” (as if the “So Expensive” point needed repeating.) This text has been lifted from the New York-based digital-only publication Business Insider. “There's a huge opportunity for companies who harness AI first”, Business Insider then-CEO Barbara Peng wrote to staff in a 29 May 2025 memo. “We are going all-in on AI.”
A tall bold headline across three lines at page centre closes EXHIBIT C: “Indonesia’s Coffee Journey: From Dutch Colonial Roots to Modern Café”. About Us. Contact Us.
Exhibit D: Identical Twins
EXHIBITS B and D are twins. Exhibit D, also a webstore printout, promotes the UMFHA-certified brand PURITI. Though page layout, lead image (only slightly), and subheadings vary, the article title and the 44 sentences of text on the Primal by Nature (EXHIBIT B) and PURITI webstores are identical. That’s unsurprising, considering both brands belong to Ashburton-based Midlands Apiaries.
Both webstore articles are dated 23 January 2025. An earlier version of the PURITI article, dated 4 June 2020 and titled “The History of Manuka Honey” surfaces only when the URL (website address) is inputted. It may be hidden, but hidden pages are hiding in plain sight from AI.
The 2020 version notes Mary Brumby’s introduction of honeybees to Northland in 1839, the initial unpopularity of mānuka honey, and the Molan confirmation of antibacterial properties in 1980. So far, so good (except correct “1980” to 1988). Unsexy, though, so Molan’s findings were “already known throughout the indigenous Maori population” is tacked on. AI hoovers up this revisionist account for exponential reproduction.
AI Boards the Mothership
As AI content examined here has infiltrated the websites of two UMF Honey Association (UMFHA)-certified brands, it seems reasonable to expect that authoritatively sourced information — just the type that would appeal to AI for global dispersion — can be found on the mothership UMFHA website. We’re in luck! The article “Mānuka Honey Bioactivity / Mānuka Honey from New Zealand – Good from the Outside In” (website news section, 11 April 2025) answers the call.
Under the subheading, "What Is Mānuka Honey?”, the article ventures: “Mānuka honey…use dates back to indigenous Māori communities, who valued mānuka for its medicinal properties…” But wait! The photo of a woman raising a spoonful of mānuka honey to her mouth in front of a flowering mānuka tree is “created by AI – ChatGPT”. Could AI also have penned the article? “Yes”, says quillbot AI Detector: “100% of text is likely AI”.
MCT EXHIBITS B, C, and D (D by default because it twins B) are also high-certainty AI creations, according to detectors Copyleaks and GPTZero.
Exhibit E: Would You Eat a Kiwi?
EXHIBIT E is a printout of an article titled “MĀNUKA — A HONEY OF A PLANT” from the EYES ON NZ website. New Zealand Story Group, a public-private partnership that promotes “brand New Zealand” through the production of materials to assist exporters, operates the website.
The text reads as advertising copy written by a human in a warm folksy style, as subheadings such as “YOU CAN CALL ME HONEY” and “FANCY A CUPPA” show. It also reads as the only true story in the MCT document.
”Mānuka is…known as a delicious high-quality honey” which is “highly valued throughout the world for its rare and complex properties”, the straight-pen text says. The Māori taonga or treasure status of the tree is noted and the multiple uses historically made of the tree explained.
The attractiveness of the tree, honey, and New Zealand as a destination is skilfully bundled — “…if you’re looking for somewhere where indigenous trees work with bees to make something awesome… we know a place”. EXPLORE MORE.
“THE KIWI BURGER THAT CONTAINS NO KIWI” headlines the last EYES ON NZ article in this printout. The first sentence asks, “Would you eat your national bird?”
Wikipedia Contamination
Exhibits B and C infect the Wikipedia entry for mānuka honey. Exhibit B — the Midlands Apiaries’ brand website excerpt — is the fourth of 36 references cited at the end of the entry and Exhibit C — the replication of Aseanz website content — is the third.
With text references to Māori words such as taonga (valued possession), rongoā (traditional medicine), Tāne (forest god) and allusions to “Māori cosmology” and “spiritual significance”, the entry reads in part as MCT-directed if not produced.
Although AI is all-seeing, the USPTO examiner assigned to the MCT application did not need to read beyond the first sentence in the Wikipedia text — Mānuka honey is a monofloral honey produced from the nectar of the mānuka tree — to conclude that “mānuka honey”, as a “descriptive term”, was unregistrable as a certification trademark.
A Tough Act to Follow
The MCT document is not easy to follow. The last sentences on pages 9, 11, 13, 36, 38, 39, and 40 are unintelligible as they break off without continuing onto the next page. The first sentence on page 15 begins in mid-sentence. Four pages are blank except for a URL in the footer.
The US attorney’s introduction is combative. He writes that the examiner’s assessment of the certification mark application is “incorrect” and advises that the examiner should “follow the guidance presented in TMEP (the USPTO Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure)…”
Advice to ‘read the manual’ may have caused the USPTO examiner to think, “It looks like attorneys behind this case submitted the evidence document without reading it, and they ask me to “read the manual”! The examiner, according to her LinkedIn profile, holds an undergraduate degree in information technology, a postgraduate JD (Juris Doctor) law degree, and has edited a law journal. She may have been the first person to read the MCT document.
(Neither MCT nor its New Zealand or US agent has responded to a request for clarification of whether the subject evidence files were read before submission to USPTO.)
A Post-Truth World
Does any of this matter? In a Trumpian post-truth dystopia, it may not. But as an industry and government-funded body that believes the “authentication” of mānuka honey is a birthright, MCT may first wish to authenticate the “evidence” it presents to trademark examiners who hold the power to make its dreams come true.
Bruce Roscoe is a Japan-resident researcher and former foreign correspondent and securities analyst. He has studied the mānuka trademark cases since the first filing in New Zealand in August 2015.
Note: AI-content detection is not an exact science. False positives and false negatives both occur, the former where, for example, AI mistakenly identifies human work as machine produced, and the latter where AI disguises AI by “humanizing” the text. Alongside this report we provide links to the websites from which MCT printed out articles for use in its US trademark case. Human or machine or hybrid authorship? Our readers can be the judge. The more important question is the quality of information, regardless of authorship. Our readers can be the judge of that, too.
Links to MCT evidence file content
EXHIBIT A: Martha Stewart
EXHIBIT B: UMF-certified brand Primal by Nature https://primalbynature.com/blogs/news/exploring-the-cultural-significance-of-the-manuka-tree
EXHIBIT C: ASEANZ website
EXHIBIT D: UMF-certified brand PURITI
EXHIBIT E: EYES ON NZ article
UMFHA: The article cited under the subheading, “AI Boards the Mothership”
Link to the Wikipedia article:
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