Surely they jest.  Because everyone is likely to confuse whipped topping and coffee creamer with prosecco whose spokesmodel is Paris Hilton, the owner of the Rich's coffee creamer marks filed an opposition in the TTAB to the registration of RICH for "sparkling wine and champagne [sic]."  If you're filing an opposition with such a weak 2(d) basis and don't even bother to stick in a dilution claim, you're not even going to garner pity publicity, so your tree falling in the woods?  I can't hear it.  (It seems from a cursory review of the Hilton Buzz blog, that if the news item doesn't appear on this blog, it doesn't rate.)

Meanwhile, poor Paris gets tsorres coming and going, as apparently the Italians don't even like the product being called prosecco, as it apparently contains fruit juice. 

I think the name RICH for a sparkling wine-style beverage is actually just fine — the market that it's aimed at will view the mark as suggestive of the lifestyle of its spokesmodel, and not descriptive of the properties of the product itself, even though the term can be used to describe wines.  Indeed, I think that with the ubiquitous Ms. Hilton hawking it, any possible descriptive aspects the mark could convey just vanish in the face of bling, glitz, and spotlights.