At Your Service January 2010

Trademarks in the Retail, Food and Hospitality (RFH) industries are tricky.  Case in point:  the current “Pomodoro” (Italian for tomato) dispute (you can imagine the commentary on this one, “You say “tomato” and I say “to-mah-to”).  According to an article on WickedLocal.com for Needham (August 26, 2009), a restaurant opened on August 18 in Needham called Restaurant Pomodoro, despite the fact that North End Pomodoro of Boston already operates two restaurants under that name in the Boston area – one in the North End and one in Brookline.  Predictably, North End Pomodoro’s attorney sent the Needham owner a letter demanding he change the name of his restaurant (more on what happened later).  Unfortunately, this is a very common scenario in the RFH sector.  Locally alone there are several restaurants which have been on the trademark offense or defense, such as Summer Shack and Blue Smoke (now Indigo) – nationwide there are dozens each year. 

So what are the rules governing such situations, how will you know when it is a real problem and when co-existence might be possible, and how can you avoid such problems all together? 

Stacey Friends is a shareholder of Ruberto, Israel & Weiner and a member of the firm's Retail, Food & Hospitality and Intellectual Property Groups. You can contact Stacey at  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

It is easy to think that a small mistake could not really affect your business.  However, even small errors regarding payment of wages and overtime could cause catastrophic harm to your business.  With the potential of class and collective actions, even a minor mistake could possibly turn your entire employee base into claimants, and thereby multiply the cost to your business.  If that was not bad enough, Massachusetts law provides for mandatory treble damages and repayment of the claimants’ attorney’s fees.  With these remedies available to employees in Massachusetts, it is easy to see why wage and hour claims are one of the most costly litigation threats faced by employers. 

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Dave Robinson is an Associate of Ruberto, Israel & Weiner and a member of the firm's Retail, Food & Hospitality and Litigation Groups. You can contact Dave at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .