BANGOR (AP) – A Skowhegan dairy has reached an out-of-court settlement of its lawsuit that sought to protect one of its most popular flavors against a Massachusetts-made product with the same name.

Gifford’s Dairy Inc. had charged in U.S. District Court that Richardson’s Farms Inc. of Middleton, Mass., was infringing on its trademarked Maine Black Bear ice cream and trying to compete unfairly with Gifford’s by associating itself with Maine.

Gifford’s Maine Black Bear is composed of vanilla ice cream with swirls of black raspberry syrup and chocolate candies filled with liquid black raspberry. The Richardson’s version is a red raspberry ice cream with chocolate chips and chocolate-covered raspberry truffles.

The legal wrangling began more than a year ago when Richardson’s filed a petition seeking to cancel Gifford’s trademark registration after the Maine firm asked the Massachusetts company to stop using the name Maine Black Bear.

The settlement agreement calls for Gifford’s to drop its federal lawsuit and Richardson’s to withdraw its trademark challenge.

“We feel the settlement confirms what we’ve been saying,” said Peter Black, a Portland lawyer representing Gifford’s. “We’re the real Maine Black Bear ice cream and we have the trademark to prove it. They don’t. We’re confident consumers will choose the real thing.”

Richardson’s said it, too, was pleased at the outcome.

“It’s what we wanted all along. Let both of us use the name and let the people decide which ice cream is better,” said Chris Richardson, a member of the family that owns the dairy. He questioned whether Gifford’s was the first to offer the flavor.

To have prevailed at trial, Gifford’s would have had to prove that consumers were confused by the two products, according to Black. Because Richardson’s ice cream is not sold at grocery stores the way Gifford’s is, the Maine copmany was less concerned about product confusion than making sure its trademark was unchallenged, he said.

The two family-owned companies grew out of dairy farm operations. The Richardson family, which has farmed the same land in Middleton for more than 300 years, began making and selling ice cream at a seasonal dairy bar in 1952.

Gifford’s has been operating in Maine for more than 40 years. It started making ice cream in 1980 and sold its milk-processing division three years later to concentrate on ice cream.