The head of the charity shopping site easyfundraising has vowed to continue fighting a trademark claim brought by easyGroup, the owners of easyJet, over its name.
The UK’s biggest charity shopping site, which works with brands to donate a percentage of every sale to a worthy cause, was issued with legal proceedings from easyGroup last year.
EasyGroup claims the company name infringes on its “easy” brand, which other companies pay annual royalties to use. The case is scheduled to reach court next summer.
“The paperwork arrived completely out of the blue. EasyJet, bizarrely, used to advertise on our platform,” said easyfundraising’s chief executive, James Moir.
“It has been an incredibly slow and drawn-out process. With this hanging over us, it’s a stress, a distraction, a cost which would be much better spent trying to make our services better,” he said. “But we want to keep fighting and hopefully we’ll be able to do that.”
Easyfundraising said its company trademark had been approved in 2010, and Moir added that “the look, feel, colour and logo” was not remotely similar to the easyGroup branding.
“We find the whole thing incredulous, because there is no crossover and no similarity whatsoever between what we’re doing and any member of easyGroup,” he said.
“We’re ultimately trying to deliver a service here that helps charities, so we do feel it’s a bit mean. They’ve got much, much deeper pockets that us, and it feels like they’re doing absolutely everything they can to drag this out.”
The British pop group Easy Life said Friday would mark the last day with their current band name after deciding not to defend a similar lawsuit brought by easyGroup, which claimed the band had infringed on its trademark. They’re performing a “farewell” show at London’s Koko on Friday night.
In a statement the band said: “Even though we aren’t able to fight this, we now need to go into a period of legal mediation with easyGroup about what happens next.
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“Perhaps our case will help provoke a dialogue around legal reform and justice being available to all, however I fear such conversations will fall on deaf ears.”
Moir said he “completely sympathised” with what the group had gone through. “They’ve done nothing wrong, and they’ve got this corporate bully that’s come out of nowhere and laid this at their door,” he said. “And I totally get they’re in a position where they can’t fight it, with the cost and distraction. It’s a real shame.”
A spokesperson for easyGroup said: “Stelios and easyGroup founded and (now) own the right to the ‘easy’ brand name. Other companies pay annual royalties for its use as part of their business strategy. We cannot allow unauthorised third parties to simply use it free, gratis and for nothing. That would be very unfair.”
