Colorado's Chicken boss Amanji Ali has opposed Tesla's attempt to register the food service's name in the UK.
A Greater Manchester chicken shop owner who lost his trademark dispute with Tesla has been left with £12,000 out of pocket.
Amanji Ali, 41, owns the trademark “Tesla Chicken & Pizza'' and has registered it for a new takeaway.
He also objected to electric car maker Tesla's bid to protect its food and beverage services trademark in the UK.
Tesla argued that Ali's trademark would capitalize on its reputation. The BBC has contacted Tesla for comment.
Mr. Ali runs Colorado Chicken in Belly, and in May 2020, he registered Tesla Chicken & Pizza with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) under Class 43 Food and Beverage Services.
He said the inspiration for his trademark was the same as the car giant and Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla.
When asked why he wanted to name his company after Nikola Tesla, he replied: “He was kind of an intelligent guy…When I was younger, I…used to read about him and look at pictures of him.”
Ali said Tesla did not file an opposition within the normal two-month period after trademark registration.
But in November 2021, I received an email from IPO.
”[It] “Someone said they were trying to register a 'Tesla' in the same class as you… from America and I was wondering who it was,” he said.
Tesla had requested international trademark protection in the UK in the food and beverage category, which also covers pop-up, self-service and takeaway restaurant services.
Mr. Ali objected, believing that if Tesla succeeded in registering, Tesla would try to invalidate the trademark for the business it wanted to grow.
In August 2020, Mr. Ali created a logo for his future business
As predicted by Mr. Ali, Tesla filed in September 2022 to invalidate its trademark, claiming that the company's “Tesla”, which was registered in 2013, has a good reputation and that the trademark would be used unfairly.
As part of the lawsuit, Tesla sought to argue that Elon Musk tweeted in January 2018 that Tesla has “goodwill” — an established reputation that can be used to protect unregistered trademarks. I'm going to open a restaurant under the Tesla sign.
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But IPO hearing officer A. James branded this evidence “hopeless” and said there was no legal basis for such “anticipated goodwill”.
Mr Ali said he would have appealed the judgment if he had the money, but he did not want to spend any more money and said the two-year dispute had left him stressed “every day”.
“To be honest, there were times when I couldn't sleep well…I couldn't work,” he said.
“Imagine this: I'm a small businessman who owns a chicken shop, and a huge corporation owned by the richest man in the world comes along.”
In January 2018, Elon Musk said Tesla would open a restaurant in “one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in Los Angeles.”
According to court documents, Tesla claimed that Mr Ali had offered to sell the trademark for £750,000 in a communication between the parties over which Mr Ali objected.
Mr Ali claims this was the result of a previous lawyer's mistake after Tesla offered to buy it for £750 and Mr Ali told his solicitor he would consider the offer “if there was a K next to it”. There is.
“I never thought, 'One day I'm going to sell my trademark to Tesla.' If I was going to sell it to them, I would have just bought the word Tesla,” he said.
