The fizzers and winners
Everyone wants to make their mark in the world, but sometimes it’s not as easy as it sounds, writes Jessica Long.
AWellington cafe dumbfounded by a trade mark warning from CocaCola is not the only Kiwi company that has faced a potential legal battle over a name.
Owners of the Willis St eatery, called Innocent Foods, were told to change their name and branding or face legal ramifications for its similarities to a Britain-based smoothie and juice brand.
However, the start-up company is not the first to run into problems with heavyweights over names.
In 1990, the owners of a Palmerston North motel, Henry and Brenda Harrod, were ordered to stop trading as Harrods after a four-year battle with the famous department-store chain.
Wellington’s Harach Tailors was also forced to change the colours of its green and gold sign – the colours Harrods uses.
Two years later, three Kiwi motels ran into strife with the Hilton Hotel chain, one of which got around the issue by changing its name to Formerly the Blackball Hilton.
In 2002, a Wanaka liquor store was threatened with legal action by United States drug and alcohol treatment clinic the Betty Ford Centre for its planned use of the same name, Betty Ford Liquor.
Hollywood’s Universal Studios threatened a Christchurch cleaner with legal action for calling her company Minions and Me Cleaning, demanding she remove images of Minions in 2015.
The business was branded via Trade Me listings, Facebook promotions, a website and a commercial vehicle with the little yellow creatures that appeared in the Despicable Me and Minions films.
But there have also been some wins for New Zealand companies.
Last year, a Chinese businessman based in Auckland tried, and failed, to claim Lewis Road Creamery’s brand for his business in Hong Kong.
Whittaker’s Chocolate triumphed over Cadbury in 2014 over what it could name its mixed-berry chocolate.
The global chocolate company attempted to stop the use of Berry Forest on a chocolate bar, because it was ‘‘confusingly similar’’ to its own Black Forest blocks. However, the same companies came to loggerheads over the trade mark use of the colour purple for wrapping, packaging or promotional material in 2004 and Whittaker’s lost.