>keep him in court until he was broke

How many times do we have to hear these kinds of stories of abuse, or patent trolls, or of other unfairness and injustice in the legal system before anything is done about it?

I mean the legal system produces some incredible injustices currently: If we get more stories such as billionaires like Jeffrey Epstein raping underage girls and getting a house-arrest with week nights spent sleeping in a special cell, what does that imply for the rest of us?

The 99% of us are burdened with this BS while the 1% take advantage of it.

Nothing is done because it's just accepted as a foregone conclusion (i.e. factored into cost-of-business calculations, made part of strategies and so forth) of doing business here.

One of the many reasons this is the "land of opportunity"...

> How many times do we have to hear these kinds of stories of abuse [...]

Well, probably more, if this type of stuff keeps getting conflated with legitimate cases of abuse and trolling. As is ... people are getting frothy about the application of the law as written.

What are you mad about? Somebody protecting their trademark? Their direct channel? Their distribution? Their customer guarantees? Their quality assurances?

Yeah - go ahead. Burn it all down. It's not like the system provided you with the cheap-ass (maybe mobile) computers via which you connect to the Internet (also cheaply) anyway...

The legal system did not provide me with computers. This post is confused.

Either you adopt the system, or the system adopts you.

The courts did not "agree." TJs initial loss was on a jurisdictional issue, and they successfully appealed that ruling. The case then settled before trial.

Because he ran out of money. Justice wasn't found, they just bullied him with lawyers.

Regardless, it's wrong to say, as the grandparent poster did, that the courts agreed with Pirate Joes.

Also, saying that TJs "bullied" him assumes that he was not in fact trading on the TJs brand. Look at his store sign: http://www.cknw.com/2017/06/08/pirate-joes-in-vancouver-clos.... Even the font he uses is very similar. He wasn't just reselling TJs products. He was capitalizing on the TJs brand to resell products (at a high markup by the way).

I think you're possibly seeing what you want to see. Both the fonts themselves and the typesetting of the logos are pretty different. Trader Joe's logo font is serif with all the letters equally sized, the letterforms are curved to avoid right angles, and it is spaced in an orderly fashion, while Pirate Joe's is sans serif with very differently sized letters (e.g. the A and O are about twice as wide as the P), the T completely encroaches on the E to the point where the E has to shrink, the letters aren't particularly curved, and there's a heart in the middle. Basically the only thing they have in common is that they're they're both kind of whimsical.

so you're saying that Pirate Joe is violation of trademark then?

Trademark infringement is all about context. Pirate Joe's for a place that sells pirate costumes isn't trademark infringement. Pirate Joe's in the same font that Trader Joe's uses, for a store that sells Trader Joe's products is probably crossing the line.

Note that the company was started as Transilvania Trading, and didn't get sued until after it changed its name to Pirate Joe's. Moreover, he added the disclaimer "Unauthorized, Unaffiliated and Unafraid" after the lawsuit was filed. Trader Joe's had a very legitimate trademark infringement case, especially during the period where the store was called "Pirate Joe's" with no disclaimer.

There is also additional case law that supports TJ claim from a trademark perspective:

1. TJ would argue PJ was selling watered down product bearing the TJ mark (I know a seemly strange arguement bc PJ was buying selling TJ product without alteration);

2. However, Inherent in all the value of all TJ products are: a) The TJ guarantee of product (i.e. TJ will replace any product you bought at TJ without question/receipt) and b) TJ customer services is part of the TJ product value bc TJ product is sold exclusively thru TJ which they control completely.

3. Therefore, without the guarantee and customer service the TJ product PJ sells is "materially different" than the TJ product TJ sells. (Before others go crazy about this point, this is not my position, it's case law, both warranties/customer service can be qualities of trademark products that remove them from first sale doctrine protections);

4. Tying this into the standard of trademark law, TJ can likely prove customers were confused and bought TJ product from PJ thinking it was TJ product, when in fact it was "materially different" product with the TJ mark.plus it doesn't help PJ advertises they sell TJ product.

5. Further by selling Product with the TJ mark not backed by the TJ guarantee dilutes the TJ mark and goodwill associated with the mark.

Trademark is definitely tricky, there are always questions of facts (I.e. Was there customer confusion in the marketplace) and so they are always ripe for trial. That said I agree with you TJ likely had a good trademark case supported by case law...unfortunately HN likes to try to make absolutes out of law and so when they hear one week about "first sale doctrine" the next they believe in absolute ownership and absolute rights to resell notwithstanding common knowledge to the contrary (they know there is no absolute right to resell rx; alcohol; guns; etc...)

I don't see any resemblance between the fonts.

Aside from both being distressed, they are not similar. Trader Joe's uses a serif font, this is sans serif.

The colors are similar.

It sounded like they weren't actually suing him over selling their products, but over the name "Pirate Joe's"

Hey may still have won that one, but it's at least somewhat plausible that consumers might actually be confused by the name.

>> consumers might actually be confused by the name

Only problem is those consumers are in a different country - one where Trader Joe's does not operate. I would bet Pirate Joe's would have happily closed down if Trader Joe's opened up a store in Vancouver, since that's all the Pirate Joe guy wanted in the first place.

That's true, but trademark is covered by treaty and simply being in another country isn't a defense against violating trademark, and the average consumer doesn't know that Trader Joe's hasn't decided to open a store in Canada.

I'm not arguing that it's necessarily a good thing or that Trader Joe's would have won. I don't think Trader Joe's should have shut him down. But the fact that he called it Pirate Joe's, and setup the store to look like a Trader Joe's (along with carrying Trader Joe's merchandise), means that it wasn't just a nuisance lawsuit. Trader Joe's had a least some chance of winning, and they had a reasonable legal argument.

>> the average consumer doesn't know that Trader Joe's hasn't decided to open a store in Canada.

Honestly, the average consumer in Canada doesn't even know what Trader Joe's is (well they probably do now, since the Pirate Joe's story has made national news here).

I get all of your points about the legal stuff, but I don't think anybody walking into P/Irate Joe's didn't know what was going on. The owner was very transparent about it, and most of the publicity P/Irate Joe's got in the news was about what the store's premise was.

I look at it very simply. You have a super enthusiastic fan in another country who wants people to have access to your products. You can look at it as an opportunity (to find an amicable solution) or as a threat (to be addressed with lawyers).

One approach generates positive goodwill and the other one generates negative goodwill.

Obviously, it's Trader Joe's prerogative to choose which way they wanted to go, but I personally think they missed out on a marketing opportunity to expand their reach.

I agree. It was a stupid move on Trader Joe's part.

So, they were claiming exclusivity on the descriptor "pirate"?

They may have thought it was confusingly similar to the pattern they use for their brands (e.g. Trader Jose's, Baker Josef's).

Update: I went and read the actual complaint by Trader Joe's and, though it does mention this, I think this comment may be overly generous to their thought process.

The complaint[1], as far as I can tell, was basically that their decor looked kinda like Trader Joe's and they sold Trader Joe's products and this combination is deceptive.

[1]: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51fc7d3ce4b05ae014fc8...

Wow, really. If I want to sell my (near worthless) right to commercially resell CaptainMuon products, then there's some jurist out there who decided I can just legally flout the terms of such an agreement, so no one makes them?

What's the thinking there? Is it just shock at alienating such a right, or is it part of some actual, coherent worldmodel that satisfies difficult desiderata?