Everton FC in battle with village farm shop over its name

peteblue · December 16, 2015

Has she beaten us yet........

ToffeeDan · December 16, 2015

Yeah you can imagine lots of clubs getting upset if there's a product out there that abbreviates to FC..let's say Fitness Club for the sake of the argument.. so you might have one in the heart of Manchester called the Manchester City Fitness Club - or Manchester City FC for example.. or perhaps the Sunderland FC or the Liverpool FC... although the last one would be pretty sh... to be honest.

If this woman trades in the village of Everton she clearly is not "passing off" the business as anything that Everton FC need to be concerned about (unless she opens a Fitness Club!!!)

njligernj · December 16, 2015

Coffee and TV said:

OMG I love this logo so much -- I have a feeling 16 old Angus had a hand in its design.

"Hmmmm, I'll take a Dozen eggs, bottle of milk, two steak, six sausages, two bats and a spider please."

anton66 · December 16, 2015

Where's the clotted cream money gone Bill?

Baines' left foot · December 16, 2015

Take the bad scruffs to the cleaners.

Pat's Van · December 16, 2015

peteblue said:
Has she beaten us yet........

she can beat me if she likes, love a good strapping rural lass

atrottel · December 16, 2015

For the nth time in this thread (and I realise some people are just on a wind-up and/or frothing for the sake of it):
EFC don't have a trademark for the name Everton in all circumstances and do not want this woman to stop using the name even though the trademark that she went out and applied for is a potential infringement of EFC's already existing trademark rights. They just want her to stop using a similar font and making the Everton part of Everton Farm Shop so noticeable (and the Farm Shop bit so semi-visible). You've got to wonder why that is if her business name is Everton Farm Shop. They even asked her if she wanted any help changing it. As I said earlier, I think it's probably a case of naivety/incompetence* on the part of the small business owner and she's gone crying to the local press, which will always lap up an underdog story from the area like this.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have wanted EFC to act in any other way if they were the professional business that everyone seems to think they are not. If they were the incompetent idiots some try to make out, they would have missed it and those same people would be in here shouting their internet mouth off about how amateur we are and why didn't we protect our trademark when other people start to trade on it (when the mark is diluted).

* Good on her though, she has got some excellent publicity out of it.

njligernj · December 16, 2015

atrottel said:
For the nth time in this thread (and I realise some people are just on a wind-up and/or frothing for the sake of it):
EFC don't have a trademark for the name Everton in all circumstances and do not want this woman to stop using the name even though the trademark that she went out and applied for is a potential infringement of EFC's already existing trademark rights. They just want her to stop using a similar font and making the Everton part of Everton Farm Shop so noticeable (and the Farm Shop bit so semi-visible). You've got to wonder why that is if her business name is Everton Farm Shop. They even asked her if she wanted any help changing it. As I said earlier, I think it's probably a case of naivety/incompetence* on the part of the small business owner and she's gone crying to the local press, which will always lap up an underdog story from the area like this.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have wanted EFC to act in any other way if they were the professional business that everyone seems to think they are not. If they were the incompetent idiots some try to make out, they would have missed it and those same people would be in here shouting their internet mouth off about how amateur we are and why didn't we protect our trademark when other people start to trade on it (when the mark is diluted).

* Good on her though, she has got some excellent publicity out of it.

I agree. While it does have negative PR connotations you have to defend your marks -- they can actually use the fact you didn't bother to defend them against you at time of renewal.

Lots of companies manage micro-legal contests like this all the time. They don't often end up in the paper but it happens semi-regularly. Day care centre uses Disney images on their sign and gets a cease and desist ... cue local media having a field day about billion dollar corporation v. local business person. But they can't let any day-care use Mickey Mouse -- what if some nonsense is going on there and now the "Disney" day care is busted by police? They have to stop people using their names and images like this to protect themselves.

Of course these papers write very little about how corporate policies make our lives infinitely worse on a daily basis and the odd cease and desist is a drop in the bucket to the damage corporations have done to this planet over the last few decades.

Regardless, for it to get this far she's either a loon who won't be reasonable or our team screwed it up.

I don't know her -- some of her quotes don't cover her in glory but whatever ... I do know our management team -- so I assume we screwed it up.

mawders · December 16, 2015

atrottel said:
For the nth time in this thread (and I realise some people are just on a wind-up and/or frothing for the sake of it):
EFC don't have a trademark for the name Everton in all circumstances and do not want this woman to stop using the name even though the trademark that she went out and applied for is a potential infringement of EFC's already existing trademark rights. They just want her to stop using a similar font and making the Everton part of Everton Farm Shop so noticeable (and the Farm Shop bit so semi-visible). You've got to wonder why that is if her business name is Everton Farm Shop. They even asked her if she wanted any help changing it. As I said earlier, I think it's probably a case of naivety/incompetence* on the part of the small business owner and she's gone crying to the local press, which will always lap up an underdog story from the area like this.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have wanted EFC to act in any other way if they were the professional business that everyone seems to think they are not. If they were the incompetent idiots some try to make out, they would have missed it and those same people would be in here shouting their internet mouth off about how amateur we are and why didn't we protect our trademark when other people start to trade on it (when the mark is diluted).

* Good on her though, she has got some excellent publicity out of it.

It's in a village called Everton. She is entitled to call display her sign as she wants. Before this case I bet a) no-one here had heard of her shop or the village, b) most of the village hadn't heard of us. It's not like she is selling blue sausages

joey_macmo · December 16, 2015

atrottel said:
For the nth time in this thread (and I realise some people are just on a wind-up and/or frothing for the sake of it):
EFC don't have a trademark for the name Everton in all circumstances and do not want this woman to stop using the name even though the trademark that she went out and applied for is a potential infringement of EFC's already existing trademark rights. They just want her to stop using a similar font and making the Everton part of Everton Farm Shop so noticeable (and the Farm Shop bit so semi-visible). You've got to wonder why that is if her business name is Everton Farm Shop. They even asked her if she wanted any help changing it. As I said earlier, I think it's probably a case of naivety/incompetence* on the part of the small business owner and she's gone crying to the local press, which will always lap up an underdog story from the area like this.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have wanted EFC to act in any other way if they were the professional business that everyone seems to think they are not. If they were the incompetent idiots some try to make out, they would have missed it and those same people would be in here shouting their internet mouth off about how amateur we are and why didn't we protect our trademark when other people start to trade on it (when the mark is diluted).

* Good on her though, she has got some excellent publicity out of it.

And for the Nth time it's still an over reaction by the club.

Some people need to think about common sense more than legality.

atrottel · December 16, 2015

mawders said:
It's in a village called Everton. She is entitled to call display her sign as she wants.

Actually she isn't necessarily, just as she isn't automatically entitled to use "Everton Farm Shop, I'm Loving It" as a slogan, even though they are words that people use all the time. The objection is to the way she is using it, not that she is using 'Everton' in her trademark application.

joey_macmo said:
And for the Nth time it's still an over reaction by the club. Some people need to think about common sense more than legality.

That's certainly an argument you could make. I wouldn't agree with it because of the danger to the trademark but there you are.

Unfortunately, people seem to think that we are trying to stop her using Everton, which is not the case, and that we started this, which is also not the case, and that we are taking her to court, which is not true. We are just objecting to her trademarking a particular logo and usage which could potentially dilute our trademark. And have been pretty damn nice about it, given what I have experienced with lawyers aggressively attempting to protect their alleged intellectual property.