Breaking News.......Sheffield Wednesday are taking legal action to get a week shortened to six days and West Ham have issued proceedings against Sainsbury's for infringing their trade mark on their cooked meat counters http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/football/early-doors/article/348661/
It is pathetic ! There zero chance of confusion, Arsenal clothing is either made by Nike or has Arsenal emblazoned across the clothing - or has a frigging cannon/crest on it. The Arsenal lawyers surely would have advised their client and acted on advice ! Even if they didn't the lawyers themselves are chiefs !
Arsenal is a word in the English language dictionary. In a not too dissimilar manner, Omega is letter in the Greek alphabet. If the Omega Watch Company is unable to claim sole rights to their name and they have been around longer than Arsenal, I do not see how our beloved club can prevent the owner of a hat shop who it appears has as much right to use the name since it is the name given to historical connections of the region in which her premises are located. The spelling is also different. It is not as though she deliberately chose to use the name to confuse prospective customers given that the products she sells are quite different from the ones you will find in the club's shop and she is hundreds of miles from the club's premises and serves a more localised area. There was a case many moons ago where the furniture manufacturer Waring & Gillow brought a successful action against another company bearing the name Gillow & Gillow as they were both in the same business and marketed to the same clientele. This is hardly the case of Arsenal FC and Miss Alicia Simon. While it has been said that the action may have originated with corporate lawyers, I would say that in my experience in business and indeed those of my clients, lawyers tend to act on behalf of and take instructions from their masters. The buck stops with the management. So much for what Mr Gazidis had to say about not wishing to impact on other businesses. Talk as they say is cheap. If he really meant what he said then calling off his dogs would have been a more telling gesture.
This isn't a copyright issue, it's a claim for use of a confusingly similar trade mark, it's nonsense. To be fair, I expect the court to overturn it, the claim has no merit what-so-ever.
The article was written with the intent of making the suit look ridiculous. It may be we don't know the full facts, because if the facts are as written, I'm not sure how it would have got to court. It may be that Arsenal "Corporate" copyrighted Arsenal in a lot of languages, so that they could distribute clothing in the future in every European language. Or, if this lady takes the copyright then in the future she could sue Arsenal if they sold clothes under the Arsenal name. It may be by nature of a pre-emptiive strike. Again, it may be that Arsenal will be happy to settle out of court, if she agrees to not sue Arsenal in the future. I'm guessing, but if they don't do this, and she does sue Arsenal, then Arsenal could be stopped from selling clothes in Europe, pending the court case. I think this stuff gets very complicated, and this kind of article is, just like a lot of the articles written about Arsenal, written by reporters who really don't know very much about anything.
Arsenal have now issued a statement on the matter - "We make every effort to ensure that, where possible, we do not unnecessarily impact on other businesses, however, it is important that Arsenal Football Club protects its global name when and where appropriate." Note to Arsenal, your statement is fair, though this is an occasion that pretty much everyone considers to be inappropriate. Edit: Apparently, if Arsene leaves, he's going be forced to change his name as it's confusingly similar and Reading are taking legal action against the local library.
Dinky and Ford are both in the car business, but I think it's unlikely that anyone would confuse the two.
Yes Mr Wright but she was way out there in Seville, sells different hats etc and has a legitimate claim to using the name Arsenale since it has a direct connection to the location of her premises. Both the club and her may sell hats but I'm sure everyone is able to distinguish the difference between the both of them. If she had called her business Arsenal - Hats r Reds or something like that, then yes, AFC could legitimately require her to change the name of her business but her business name is quite clearly different. By your statement she would presumably be fine if she called her business Arsenal but instead was a pet shop or offered anything other than ' hats, shoes and clothing '.......
Apparently the woman was trying to trademark the Arsenal logo that encompassed the whole of Spain and that is the reason the club acted
I tried a search but found nothing on the logo. Some headlines speak of a trademark infringement and their articles all refer to the name ' Arsenale ' but no logo mentioned. D'ya have a link to this or a picture of the logo Lord Cym? Put it another way Did you see sumfink or thought you saw sumfink?
I don,t believe it. It s good publicity for the shop though. Also arsenal also is the word for a storage place, and it,s a place in london, you can,t copyright that.(maybe arsenal fc) Madonna tried this years ago with her name and failed.
