The owner of a small vegetarian snack company has been forced to change the name of his flapjacks after Burger King threatened legal action.
Wholebake, based in Corwen, North Wales, named its oat-based bars “Whopper!” because of the size of the snack.
But Burger King's legal experts claimed it infringed its trademark and people may believe the vegetarian snack was associated with the fast food chain’s Whopper range.
Mark Gould, managing director of Wholebake, which employs 20 people, today accused Burger King of "using its financial muscle to squash the little guy".
He added: "We would have liked to have fought these actions all the way but we are a small company based in North Wales - these costs would have been nothing to Burger King but they probably would have cost us our business."
The minimum cost of legal action to defend the name would have been in the region of £20,000 but longer term could have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Mr Gould said he had reluctantly decided to change the name of the snack to “Flapjacks” as he could not afford the legal costs.
2 comments:
well that sucks big time...yah, like we're going to think we are getting hamburgers in wales if we see pancake whoppers?>..duh
A mate of mine had a hairdressers in Sheffield called "British Hairways" ... red , white n blue logo ... British Airways tried suing him , the fuckers, I mean how can you mistake a Hair salon with a Airplane giant ?
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