A takeaway boss has been slapped with a £12,000 invoice after dropping a trademark battle with Elon Musk‘s Tesla.
Amanj Ali, 41, needed to name his new meals store ‘Tesla Chicken & Pizza’ as an homage to inventor Nikola Tesla and registered the restaurant in May 2020. He initially confronted no points with the identify.
But after Tesla legal professionals came upon he’d registered the trademark within the UK, they launched a bid to guard its trademark. Ali misplaced the “David and Goliath” authorized battle and was left to pay £12,000 in fines and authorized prices.
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(Image: William Lailey SWNS)
Ali, who owns only one hen store in Bury, Greater Manchester, mentioned he would not be inviting the SpaceX boss to dine in his restaurant following the spat. “I was so disappointed after all this,” he mentioned.
“All I can say is it is just because a big company [took on] a small company – nothing else. When I lost it, I was kind of hurting, but I just tried to keep a secret and not tell it to anybody. It was 18 months that I had been fighting them… I couldn’t sometimes sleep properly, and at that time, it was kind of hard for me.”
(Image: William Lailey SWNS)
He added about Musk: “If you asked me, ‘Will you be inviting him [to his chicken shop]’, I would say, ‘No.'”
Ali mentioned he initially utilized for his trademark within the hopes of opening a brand new takeaway enterprise, additionally within the Greater Manchester space. His present hen store was known as Colorado’s and he needed his new premises to have its personal identification, full with a distinct identify.
He selected ‘Tesla Chicken & Pizza’ as a result of the Serbian-American inventor had made an impression on him as a baby. He even deliberate to have a mural to the scientist within the restaurant.
“In my young age, I read about him… I don’t know whether it is true or not, but some people claim he invented a lot of things,” Ali mentioned. “For my Colorado’s brand, we do chicken only but with Tesla Chicken & Pizza, I wanted to do pizza as well.”
(Image: William Lailey SWNS)
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In November 2021 Ali began receiving emails from the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), saying one other social gathering had utilized for the ‘Tesla’ trademark in Class 43 for food and drinks. The restauranteur had no concept the world-famous automobile producer was behind the applying till he searched it on the web.
“When we Googled that address, it was the headquarters of Tesla Motors,” he mentioned. “I’m a micro businessman being faced [with] one of the richest man’s companies, [so] I found a solicitor, and I called them.”
(Image: William Lailey SWNS)
In May 2022, Ali mentioned representatives from Tesla supplied him £750 to promote the rights to his trademark. But he joked together with his authorized staff that solely ‘£750,000’ could be sufficient to surrender the identify.
Ali mentioned his lawyer relayed this to Tesla’s legal professionals as truth and so they later used this to efficiently argue he had acted in “bad faith.”
Ali was ultimately pressured to pay Tesla £4,000 in November of final yr. He additionally forked out £8,000 in authorized charges – however he would not maintain a grudge. “I’m the type of person that I don’t have any hate against anyone. I am too busy to hate people.”
The Daily Star has contacted Tesla for remark.
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