Yahoo Finance An easy target: Meet the firms being sued in Easygroup’s trademark war
Easygroup, the parent company of the budget airline Easyjet, has filed a record number of trademark lawsuits this year.
Why? Well, it seems they are mostly targeting companies with the word ‘easy’ in their names.
Easyjet is just one of the Easygroup entities, with many other subsidiaries including ‘easy’ in their names, such as Easyhotel, Easybus, Easypet and even Easycoffee.
Since 2015, the company has launched over 50 trademark legal actions. According to the court’s filing system for England and Wales, the group filed 14 trademark lawsuits this year so far, a 600 per cent increase on the two claims filed in 2022.
The group has a £4m legal budget to take action against people and companies that it considers to be “brand thieves”, Easygroup’s boss Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou has bragged previously.
City A.M. takes you through four of Easygroup’s most high-profile trademark lawsuits currently making their way through the courts.
No easy rest for Premier Inn
The company, along its Easyhotel brand, hit Whitbread-owned Premier Inn with an intellectual property claim in September.
Easygroup has accused Premier Inn of infringing on its trademark during its ‘rest easy’ campaign which was launched in April 2021 for advertisement and promotion.
The lawsuit is still very new but the hotel chain is preparing to fight the claim. In its defence argument, Premier Inn has argued that it has been using “rest easy” in the course of its trade without Easygroup’s consent “as it is legally entitled to do”.
Easygroup also stated in its claim that Easyhotel and Premier Inn are direct competitors. Premier Inn denied this in its defence argument, stating its direct competitors are Travelodge, Holiday Inn Express and Ibis.
Premier Inn’s lawyers wrote: “Premier Inn constitutes the UK’s largest hotel brand with more than 840 hotels and over 83,500 rooms whereas according to the easyHotel.com website there are only 18 easyHotels in the UK with a combined total of 1,786 rooms.”
No easy life
Last month, the company got its lawyers to target a Leicestershire-based band known called ‘Easy Life’.
Again, it is the ‘easy’ in the band’s name that has triggered the firm into filing a lawsuit. Easygroup owns the brand Easylife, an online retail business that joined the group two years ago having started in the 1990s. It was also claimed that the band used Easyjet branding for their ‘Life’s a Beach’ tour.
In a statement, Haji-Ioannou targets frontman Murray Matravers by saying he “intentionally used Easygroup’s well known stylisation and images of Easyjet planes in his marketing”. He went on to say that Matravers not only took “advantage” of easyGroup’s brand, but he also ‘damaged’ it. His example was linking to an article and adding Matravers was “carried off stage for being too drunk to perform”.
The pop band who are signed with Island Records started back in 2017. The band issued a public statement at the time of the claim hitting back saying it was “forcing us to change our name or take up a costly legal battle which we could never afford”.
It was reported by The Guardian earlier this month that the band did not fight against the legal action and opted to change their name. In a post on X (formally Twitter) the band posted to their fans saying: “For the very last time… thanks so much for celebrating our story with us. see you later, maybe never”.
No hotel wi-fi connection
In June, the conglomerate giant filed legal action against a London-based company known as Easy Hotel Wi-Fi Ltd, which was a web portal company. Again, Easygroup is targeting a company with ‘easy’ in its names, but this time its legal pressure is on a very small company.
The business was incorporated in May 2022 with two directors Mohamed Riyaz Bachani and Yazim Tajdin Nanji. But according to Companies House, it filed a notice for a voluntary strike-off two weeks ago. There is no evidence of the company’s website on Google anymore.
According to the court system, the Easy Hotel Wi-Fi Ltd and its two directors don’t have legal representatives, signalling that this small company won’t fight this expensive legal battle.
No donations
Last year, Easygroup issued legal action against Staffordshire-based charity tech platform Easyfundraising over its use of ‘easy’ and using “orange colouring”. Easygroup is claiming the company was committing “brand theft”.
However, Easyfundraising is fighting back. Boss James Moir told City A.M.: “We are very confident that we are going to win”. Moir added that Easygroup’s legal trademark war is “fundamentally wrong”.
The case will be going into court for the main trial next June, 28 months after the claim was first launched.
No easy ride
It has also target a small firm in the car industry.
Halifax-based car financing company Easy Car Credit Ltd along with its director Mohammed Adil Saleem were with legal action back in March.
The small business was scheduled to strike-off in June but that action was discontinued. Easy Car Credit appears to have caved, having changed its name to Car Play 247 Ltd in September.
Easygroup’s position
Haji-Ioannou continues to defend Easygroup’s actions.
“My general view is that brand theft is profitable for the brand thief that is why it occurs a lot. It is not innocent use.”
Easygroup’s boss Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou
“My general view is that brand theft is profitable for the brand thief that is why it occurs a lot. It is not innocent use,” Haji-Ioannou told City A.M.
“It is a back handed compliment to the strength of our easy brand that so many people are trying to use it to make a profit, albeit without our permission,” he added.
