It’s a Relentless exercise to choose the name of your business…

When small businesses choose their business name, the reasons are often personal.  Business names are often a homage to somebody or something special to the business owner.

A fish restaurant, for example, could well be named after a boat that the owner is sentimentally attached to.

This all seems reasonable, but it’s best to choose a boat that isn’t called something like “TGI Friday”, or “McDonald”.

Scott Matthews, aged 24 and from the south coast of England, recently learned this.  His restaurant is called “Relentless”, apparently after his father’s sturdy fishing boat.

He says that the logo was simply made up by typing “Relentless” into his word processing software, using an old English script.  He chose a black background because he likes black backgrounds.

Recently, he heard from the Coca-Cola company, who have an energy drink with a similar brand name and similar logo.

Mr Matthews claims that his first contact from Coca-Cola came in the less than cosy form of a seventeen page legal document demanding that he change the name and signage of his business.

His reaction appears to have been rather assertive and rather shorter than 17 pages.  He’s not saying entirely what he said, but we’re guessing it could pithily be summarised in two words.

This is an example of the civil wrong of “passing off”.  If a product has a similar name to another product and is likely to imply endorsement or some other form of customer confusion, then it’s possible to petition a court for an order to mandate the party who got the name second to change their name.

Of course, the court does not necessarily grant such an order.  There has to be some evidence of customers being likely to be confused by the similarity.

It’s hard to imagine somebody opening a can of energy drink and being crestfallen at the non-emergence therefrom of a steak and lobster dinner, for example.

However, it’s possible to imagine somebody being attracted to a restaurant because of an apparent association with a better known product, such as an energy drink.

It seems that both Mr Matthews and the Coca-Cola company intend being somewhat relentless in this case.  We will let you know what happens if we’re able to find out.