September 2018 News

A Monsta Intellectual Property Success Story

This month we thought we would share some news of a recent successful defence of a client’s brand. This is typical of the sort of situation that can arise where a claim is made against your business name and we set out the story below…
 

 Our client is the Monsta Pizza company, based in Wendover, whose owners run their pizza business with a monster-themed pizza oven. It’s a fun and colourful idea, the pizzas are oven-cooked and then emerge from the monster’s mouth when they are ready. I can vouch that their food is really very good, too.
 

Anyway, they filed their own trade mark application last year, and out of the blue came an opposition from Monster Energy, the large California-based energy drinks company. They claimed that MONSTA PIZZA would harm their interests in respect of their Monster Energy drinks brand.

 

We’ve been running Monsta Pizza’s defence over the last year, and a decision in their favour arrived very recently. We argued that there was no real likelihood of confusion between MONSTA PIZZA and the Monster Energy drinks, and also pointed out that ‘monster’ was a very descriptive term in this field – many restaurants have a ‘monster burger’ or the like.

This is how the victory was received:



 

The case made it to the BBC news website: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-45357403

 

For more details about Monsta Pizza please visit

www.monstapizza.com/

www.facebook.com/Monsta-Pizza-1257823234340124/

twitter.com/monstapizza

www.instagram.com/monstapizza/

 

For more press coverage please see:

https://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/what-s-in-a-name-winslow-s-quirky-monsta-pizza-fighting-off-aggressive-legal-challenge-from-global-energy-drinks-brand-monster-1-8584381

http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/16388852.wendover-firm-monsta-pizza-goes-head-to-head-with-energy-drink-giant-monster-energy-in-david-and-goliath-battle/

https://www.mix96.co.uk/news/local/2647880/bucks-pizzerias-fight-against-major-us-company/

 

Do let me know if you would like any advice about intellectual property matters.

 

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