By Kieren McCarthy for The Register
This article has been reproduced with permission.
Karl Kahn was informed in 2004 that his EasyPizza.co.uk domain
was infringing the rights of EasyGroup - which runs EasyJet and
other "easy" companies, including EasyPizza.com. Mr Kahn has been
trading since 1997 and registered the domain in 1999.
Mr Kahn refused to back down, however, resulting in High Court
proceedings being issued against him by Sir Stelios.
Following an acrimonious build-up to the court date in February
this year, Sir Stelios then pulled out at the last minute, serving
a Notice of Discontinuance.
Earlier this month, however, Mr Kahn succeeded in getting
EasyGroup to sign a consent order covering his costs, estimated at
£135,000, and agreeing not to interfere with his business or bring
any further court action without the approval of the court. To
date, EasyGroup has yet to pay the costs.
But Mr Kahn is not the only person to have received the
attentions of EasyGroup. Sir Stelios has been campaigning against
"easy" domain name owners for over six years - even though
EasyGroup was informed by the World Intellectual Property
Organisation in 2000 that it was not entitled to domain names with
the word "easy". The English High Court also ruled against
EasyGroup, saying the word "easy" was too common in the English
language.
But this has not prevented dozens of companies being threatened
by Stelios because the huge costs associated with defending a claim
in the High Court have been extremely effective in forcing people
to hand over their domains. There is even a section on the
EasyGroup website dedicated to "brand thieves", outlining the
various legal actions the group is taking against companies that
use the word "easy".
EasyGroup claims that the owners of easy domains are "passing
off" on its name. However, that legal argument is based on a
selective reading of the law which would require the companies to
also copy EasyGroup's well-known orange livery and
lower-case/upper-case typography, and to make out they are in some
way associated with EasyGroup. That is not the case with the
majority of easy domain name owners.
However, Stelios has consistently embarked on brinkmanship with
companies that stand up to him, most famously when Easyart.com
refused to back down, and saw EasyGroup again pull out of its High
Court hearing just days before.
The same barrister that represented Easyart, David Hansel of
Memery Crystal, represented EasyPizza, and is also thought to be
representing a number of other firms in similar disputes.
He said of Stelios's most recent case: "As with its earlier
action for passing off and trademark infringement against Easyart,
EasyGroup cannot claim a monopoly over trading names beginning with
the word 'easy'. This applies even where they have obtained a
registered trademark, but are seeking to stop an earlier trader
from using the 'easy' name."
Karl Kahn summed up his experience succinctly: "Stelios is a
rich bully who tried to intimidate us into closing our business. He
hired expensive lawyers, private investigators and attempted to
force EasyPizza out of business. We didn't have his resources but
we knew we were in the right and thank goodness justice prevailed.
We now have a court order protecting us from further interference
by Stelios."
In a statement today, EasyGroup said that during the case it
discovered that “contrary to initial information we had, that Mr
Khan's outfit had been in operation for longer than we originally
thought. As a result the EasyGroup decided to settle its case with
Mr Khan out of court.”
According to the statement, Stelios said: "We do not bully
people, we only protect our lawful rights and the fact that we
decided that Mr Khan has certain legitimate rights to the name in a
very limited area of London is proof that we do act reasonably and
responsibly and always in good faith. We wish him well in trading
using this name inside the very narrow geographical territory."
© The Register
2006
