Oooops, I did it again, or do DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY UK LLP ever read what they send out?
Now we have another masterpiece from the same legal workshop. A second letter arrived from the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY on Friday.
Amuse yourself as I did by admiring the same WW.W.EASY-MOBILES.CO.UK (sic!) typo as we have already seen here. This fine example of typographic persistency perfectly correlates with the following sentence I find particularly touching:
We write further to our letter dated 23 May 2006 to which we have received no response.
Foolishly I assumed that this very web site is my public response to their letters. Little did I know that they actually expect something with a bit of personal touch (a letter?, a phonecall may be?).
These two things just once again show that in the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY UK LLP they not only do not read what they put in envelops, but also that they are generally not doing the rest of their job properly. Consider that I first noticed this in the first DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY letter on the 26 of May (the letter itself went online a day earlier) and mentioned this for the second time here. In effect this means that for all this time neither the Lawyers nor their clients ever bothered to look at the domain in question!
Not being myself an obsessive attention seeker, I take the lack of interest from the side of people whom I’d rather avoid anyway as a good sign but to add to this it also makes the job of defending easy-mobiles domain much easier. Firstly, it is yet another argument confirming bad faith on the side of the easyGroup IP Licensing Limited as it clearly demonstrates the lack of genuine interest in the domain itself but rather looks as a poor implementation of scare tactics. Secondly, I assume that if this matter will ever go to court and/or will be presented to the Nominet, this website will be assesed in all its entirety. If a big Law Firm wishes to be reputed as a laughing stock, than who am I to prevent them from doing this?
Well, I honestly don’t know if Stelios somehow enjoys preferential treatment from the DLA PIPER RUDNICK GRAY CARY UK LLP and this is a part of their VIP Service or this is just their general policy, but with this degree of incompetence and negligence they are certainly not at the top of my list of Law Firms now.
tags: dla piper rudnick gray cary letter, easy-mobiles, nominet, dla piper rudnick gray cary, law firm, lawyers, vip services, easygroup, letter example
June 19th, 2006 at 5:08 am
easyGroup loses legal action against Easypizza
Added: (Fri Jun 16 2006)
easyGroup loses legal action against Easypizza Limited
easyGroup IP Licensing Limited, the company that holds intellectual property belonging to companies controlled by the controversial Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of easyJet, has abandoned its High Court action against Easypizza Limited and its directors. Easypizza Limited currently operates in Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, Islington, and began trading in 1997 where it has developed a steady business in supplying its freshly baked pizza and Italian food and drink products to customers under the Easypizza brand. In 2004, Stelios’s company started its own similarly named easyPizza business serving re-heated frozen pizza on a delivery-only basis to certain parts of the Milton Keynes area and has since expanded in partnership with Famous Moes Pizza into Brighton, Portsmouth, Southampton and Worthing.
Easypizza Limited were represented by Memery Crystal Solicitors and easyGroup were represented by Claire Algar of Collyer Bristow Solicitors.
The case became increasingly acrimonious and bitter and a High Court trial of the matter was originally due to commence in February 2006, but easyGroup served a Notice of Discontinuance shortly beforehand. Easypizza Limited then withdrew its own Counterclaim bringing matters to an end although not before the expenditure of several hundred thousand pounds in legal costs on both sides.
David Hansel and Jane Marsden of Memery Crystal acted for Easypizza Limited. David Hansel says, “As with its earlier action for passing off and trade mark infringement against Easyart (who Memery Crystal also successfully defended), easyGroup cannot claim a monopoly over trading names beginning with the word “easy”. This applies even where they have obtained a registered trade mark, but are seeking to stop an earlier trader from using the ‘easy’ name. easyGroup have now been ordered to pay Easypizza Limited’s costs of the action and will not be able to bring another similar action against Easypizza Limited without the permission of the Court, which we are confident that we would be able to oppose successfully.”
Karl Kahn of EasyPizza says, “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.”
For further information regarding EasyPizza, please contact:
Karl Kahn
EasyPizza Ltd | 48 Topsfield Parade | London N8 8PT
Tel 08712 192 192 | Fax 020 8444 7272 | email info@easypizza.ltd.uk
For further information regarding Memery Crystal please contact
David Hansel
Memery Crystal LLP solicitors | 44 Southampton Buildings | London WC2A 1AP
Tel 020 7242 5905 | Fax 020 7242 2058 | Email info@memerycrystal.com