A battle over a logo is brewing between a small independent coffee shop owner and a giant food services company.
On one side is Coffeeco, a two-store Kingston chain, soon to become three, that serves up certified organic coffee. The other is Coffeecompany, a brand of fair trade and organic coffee by Aramark Canada, which is a division of U.S. parent Aramark Corp.
Back in late 2007, Richard Ottenhof was sitting at his kitchen island while his 10-year-old daughter Nora was doing her homework.
He had a lot on his mind. He had recovered from major heart-valve surgery that summer. He had just signed a lease to open a coffee shop on Johnson St. near Queen’s University.
Problem was he didn’t have a name. Though Ottenhof already ran a coffee roasting company called Multatuli, he knew that name didn’t roll off the tongue.
Suddenly, Ottenhof, 48, said it came to him in a flash: coffee plus eco, which also spells coffeeco, but in both black and green. He leaned over, grabbed Nora’s four-in-one colour ballpoint pen, and wrote it out on a Post-it note.
That became the name of his incorporated Ontario company. The logo is used in the stores, on cups, travel mugs and T-shirts. Ottenhof even got a personalized licence plate and Twitter handle with the name.
Then late last year, he got a telephone call from a colleague in the specialty coffee world, saying he spotted a similar logo — coffeecompany — at the Moncton airport.
After a bit of sleuthing that included sending a friend in New Brunswick to the airport to send the cup by overnight courier, Ottenhof learned the logo belonged to Aramark Canada.
That’s the Canadian arm of the privately held U.S. company Aramark Corp., a professional services company that offers food services to universities, health care facilities and offices among other businesses.
Ottenhof then called Aramark’s office in Toronto and spoke to assistant general counsel Kathy Mah about the logo and its similarities.
This week, he received a formal letter from Mah, saying Aramark disagrees with Ottenhof’s concerns.
“The designs used by each of the companies are not identical and are not confusingly similar since there are distinguishing and unique features in the Aramark designs,” Mah’s letter says.
It goes on to point that while Coffeeco filed a trademark in 2008, it was abandoned in 2010, so “Coffeeco can obtain no rights through this abandoned application.”
Aramark has three trademark applications, filed in 2010, in the works and “will take whatever steps necessary to protect its marks, including opposing any new application Coffeeco may file, if the trademarks are confusingly similar to any of our marks,” the letter says.
Mah also warned that Aramark may take action if Coffeeco expands beyond Kingston, which Ottenhof hopes to do.
Megan Haney, a spokeswoman for Aramark Corp., said: “The claims of Richard Ottenhof are without merit. We followed all the legal procedures for using and registering the trademarks.”
Ottenhof said he filed a trademark application, but after being blocked for a separate trademark for tea, he gave up the coffee application. He felt his original application was not broad enough and intended to file again.
“There’s no question that we were using that logo years before they were,” Ottenhof said. “This is our identity. I find it very unlikely that they weren’t inspired by looking at my logo.”
Lawyer Javad Heydary of Heydary Hamilton said trademark protection can come through registration, as well as through common law. By registering a trademark through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, which can take at least 20 months, it ensures nationwide protection.
However, even though Ottenhof abandoned his trademark application, if he can prove it was well known in an area, he could have some protection.
“It would come down to the way they used the mark. How widely was it used? How strong was the mark?” Heydary said.
But he cautioned it is very costly to launch a trademark fight.
“In my experience, these cases usually get resolved through some compromise,” he said.
Ottenhof says he doesn’t have the financial means to go up against a big company like Aramark. “I know their resources. I don’t have a prayer if I don’t get them to behave in an ethical way.”
For Ottenhof, it’s personal.
“I did that logo with my own hand,” he said, calling it a doodle that he has kept in his desk drawer for years. “Although it’s not great art, it’s not a canvas, and it’s not hanging in an art gallery, I think it was a stroke of budding genius.”
Source: thestar.com/business/article/1118393—battle-brewing-over-coffee-logo?bn=1
Battle brewing over coffee logo
