'Tesla Chicken & Pizza' Vs Elon Musk: How A Lengthy Legal Dispute Ended

A restaurant owner was left with hefty losses following a lengthy trademark dispute with Elon Musk's Tesla.  

What Happened: According to a BBC report, Amanj Ali lost a legal dispute with Tesla Inc TSLA centered around the trademark "Tesla Chicken & Pizza," which he registered for his chicken restaurant in May 2020. 

Ali owns Colorado's Chicken in Bury, Greater Manchester. He said he filed for the "Tesla Chicken & Pizza" trademark because he read about inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla in his younger days and was inspired by him. That's also how Musk's Tesla got the inspiration for its name.

Tesla did not oppose the trademark in the normal two-month objection period after Ali registered the trademark, but in November 2021, the restaurant owner received a letter from the Intellectual Property Office saying Tesla had requested protection for its international trademarks in the UK's food and drink category.

Ali opposed the registration but failed. In September 2022, Tesla submitted an application to invalidate Ali's trademark. The EV maker argued that Ali would benefit from the Tesla name and gain an unfair advantage from the trademark. 

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The Intellectual Property Office sided with Musk's Tesla and ordered Ali to pay £4,000 ($5,055) on top of the £8,000 in legal fees he had already racked up in order to oppose Tesla in the trademark dispute.

Ali reportedly said he would have continued the fight and appealed the court's decision if he had the money to do so. 

According to court documents, Tesla claimed that Ali offered to sell the trademark to Tesla for £750,000. Ali maintains that monetary gain was never his intention.

“I never thought, ‘One day I’m going to sell my trademark to Tesla.’ If I was meaning to sell it to them, I would have bought just the word Tesla,” Ali said.

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Photo by vit-ch- for Unsplash