4 Likes
“the restaurant’s logo could cause Pornhub customers to be confused by the restaurant’s offerings”
Porn Hub doesn’t want their good name sullied by confusion about an association with German kebabs.
2 Likes
There are many. Are they going to sue/force them all to change?
In Poland
https://i.imgur.com/CJEqEpp.jpg
Hong Kong
https://i.imgur.com/ZepvkKb.jpg
Australia
https://i.imgur.com/HtagxSy.png
San Antonio, TX
https://i.imgur.com/1TwH5WJ.jpg
Australia again
https://i.imgur.com/R5k7vcN.jpg
Costa Rica
https://i.imgur.com/oxiK7VN.jpg
3 Likes
Haha - these are all much more blatent.
Only the one in San Antonio is relevant.
But I agree what PornHub is doing here is really just a stupid bullying tactic, with no legal merit to it.
People overstep their rights in TM far too often. There ought to be more penalties for such.
About 5 or 6 years ago a big company threatened my foster brother with a trademark infringement case on 2 of their US federally registered marks, over the name of his small hobby business. I fed him response language to email back to their attorneys.
We explained that his use of the name was prior to their use of their own name which they had registered as a mark (so he had senior use, and so his continued use would be legal despite their federal registration), and that the second trademark registration they cited was completely irrelevant.
When their attorneys responded to him with nothing more than a bunch of bullshit, threatening him again but ignoring the facts he cited, I knew they were just trying to bully him off his use.
I told him to ignore their threats, or, if they did try to actually file something against him, I had a retired TM attorney friend (with whom I’d consulted to make sure I wasn’t making any mistakes, and who generally gets hot under the collar about misuse) who would be happy to file a trademark cancellation proceeding against them for free.
5 Likes
Snickering aside, I don’t see how PornHub can win this.
- PornHub logo: Color is #ff9900, font is a customized Arial Bold, and no words are underlined.
- Döner Haus logo: Color is #f7bd01, font seems to be Neue Helvetica, and the word Döner is underlined in white.
On the other hand, the owners of Döner Haus should ask for their money back from whoever created their logo for them, and go with something that establishes their own brand - for example, their website’s other graphics are using a yellow grungy paint-swath looking banner plus tilted rectangles, and 2 fonts, and I think 2 yellow colors… They need a single set of brand rules that is just for them, not a hodge-podge.
The “almost Porn Hub but not technically” logo lets them lean into the tee-hee-wink-nudge signage “from the front to the back” that says, “Big Doner Energy” and “Get Stuffed” but… seriously, is the sandwich so bad that they need to do that, to get walkup customers?
3 Likes
Interesting, thanks. I had mistakenly assumed that they were an older establishment[1] being picked on, but now I see they are kind of playing games with the situation.
[1] “German restaurant” and “old establishment” are always linked together in my head. Maybe because I’ve never seen one that wasn’t 80+ years old.
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