A US court has the authority to hear a trademark lawsuit by grocery chain Trader Joe’s against the man who runs a Vancouver knockoff, Pirate Joe’s, a USA federal appeals court ruled Friday.
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The grocer’s complaint says Hallatt violated the Lanham Act and Washington law and asks the district court to permanently enjoin Hallatt from reselling goods or using Trader Joe’s trademarks in Canada.
Pirate Joe’s, a renegade Canadian grocery store, is going back to court with Trader Joe’s, an American grocery store with a cult following.
We conclude that Trader Joes alleges a nexus between Hallatts conduct and American commerce sufficient to warrant extraterritorial application of the Lanham Act, says the appellate court. He claimed he was purchasing the products to distribute them in Canada through his store, then known as Transilvania Trading, but now known as Pirate Joe’s.
Ahoy! says Canadian entrepreneur Michael Norman Hallatt, who chose to fill that vacuum with his Pirate Joes store in Vancouver, British Columbia.
A United States district judge dismissed the case, writing that Trader Joe’s could not prove that Pirate Joe’s affected its business in the US.
Trader Joe’s, which did not respond to a request for comment, estimated in court documents that Hallatt had spent more than $350,000 on its products.
The lower court’s decision argued that Trader Joe’s failed to explain how Hallatt’s store affects USA commerce (since it caters to luckless Canadians).
Hallatt’s attorney, Nathan Alexander, said in an email he and Hallatt disagree with the ruling and are evaluating their options. When Trader Joe’s stopped selling to Hallatt, he started dressing in “disguises to shop at Trader Joe’s without detection” and drove to Seattle, Portland and California to buy branded products, according to Trader Joe’s complaint.
“It’s pretty obvious to me that Pirate Joe’s is short for unaffiliated, or unauthorized, there never has and never will be an effort to trade on a name, we’re just providing a service and we think it’s benign”, Michael Hallatt, Pirate Joe’s founder, told the Guardian on Monday.
“We’re doing nothing but good things for Trader Joe’s”.
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Customers at Pirate Joe’s can expect to pay a 30-per-cent markup after the currency exchange, Hallatt said, adding he doubled the store space after recently moving to a new location.
