Eden Project drops legal case to dig itself out of a hole in trademark row

‘They get away with it because they’ve got the financial might to force their will on other people’

THE Eden Project launched a legal challenge against a gardener with a similar sounding business name before withdrawing the claim after being accused of “corporate bullying”.

The Cornish attraction’s legal team wrote to Susan Davies, owner of Gardens of Eden in Penrith, after she applied to trademark her businesss name.

The Eden Project had asked Ms Davies to agree to a set of conditions on using the word “Eden”, despite it being a reference to Eden Valley in Cumbria where she is based. But the venue yesterday said it had dropped the legal challenge after listening to her concerns.

Lawyers for the Eden Project, which attracts more than one million visitors a year, had originally argued that the name of Ms Davies’s business is too similar, according to the BBC. They had asked her to agree to terms including restricting her use of the word Eden to within Cumbria.

Ms Davies argued that the public are unlikely to confuse the two Edens, but said she did not have the funds to fight the case in court. She accused the company of “corporate bullying”.

“I don’t think that if somebody rings up the Gardens of Eden gardening service to come and do their borders that they think somebody is going to come up all the way from that big dome thing in Cornwall to do it,” she told the BBC.

“They get away with it because they’ve got the financial might to force their will on other people,” she said.

An Eden Project spokesman said: “Having reviewed Susan’s application further and listened to her concerns, we are happy to withdraw our opposition to the trademark application to use the name Gardens of Eden.”