NHL’s Kraken Sued by Seattle’s Kraken Lounge over Name Trademark Violation
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The NHL’s Seattle Kraken are already facing their first opponent sooner than even placing together their reliable roster.
The league’s most up-to-date expansion membership is the topic of a $3.5 million lawsuit filed on Thursday by a native bar and music venue that claims the team’s branding and belief to originate a nearby apply facility restaurant dangers “irreparably harming its stamp,” in keeping with Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times.
Punk-rock dive bar Kraken Bar & Lounge filed the trademark infringement and tortious interference suit in King County Superior Court and is asking the team be prohibited from the usage of “The Seattle Kraken.”
The bar’s house owners, William Knupp and Kat and Daniel Colley, “had begrudgingly tolerated the team’s title preference” even after unusual prospects wearing “hockey themed apparel” started coming to the bar hoping to attain it a fashioned gathering home, per Baker. Nonetheless, “the last straw, in keeping with the lawsuit, got right here when the team this month launched this might possibly possibly originate the Kraken Bar & Grill at its deliberate $80 million coaching facility.”
“That The Kraken Bar would or must silent change into a ‘hockey bar’ or a sports bar of any kind became once anathema to The Kraken Bar and its fashioned patrons,” the lawsuit says, per Baker. “The Kraken Bar’s fashioned patrons frequented the bar precisely because it became once a dive-bar, connected to reasonable meals and drinks to boot to cutting edge dwell music performances by successfully-identified punk and steel bands.”
The bar has been in change in Seattle’s College District since 2011.
The NHL did now not answer to the Seattle Times for remark.
It be the 2d time in most fresh years an expansion team has realized itself in a trademark fight. When the Vegas Golden Knights unveiled their team title and logo, the United States Navy argued against the membership’s trademark registration for that reason of their exhibition parachute team the usage of the identical title. The challenge became once in the end resolved in 2018 after negotiating a trademark coexistence agreement with the NHL membership.