How are they supposed to drop something they never filed?
Buc-ee’s has responded to the public outcry over the gas station chain’s lawsuit against a small family-owned convenience store in Ohio…but public records don’t match their claims.
By now you’ve probably heard about the lawsuit that was filed by Buc-ee’s against Beaver’s Mini Mart, which is located in…Beavercreek, Ohio.
The store at issue is called Beaver’s Mini Mart, so you can probably guess what their logo is: A beaver, just like every other business in BEAVERCREEK, Ohio. Even their high school’s mascot is a Beaver (which looks suspiciously like the Oregon State logo, but that’s neither here nor there).
Anyway, Buc-ee’s recently opened their first Ohio location in Huber Heights back in April, and the store is only about a 20 minute drive from Beaver’s Mini Mart. So the gas station behemoth filed a lawsuit against Beaver’s Mini Mart, claiming that the convenience store’s beaver logo infringes on their trademark because it features “wide eyes and a smile” while also using the color red. I guess any smiling animal is off limits, in Buc-ee’s opinion, because they also won a lawsuit against a gas station that used a smiling alligator as their logo.
According to Buc-ee’s, the mini mart’s logo is “likely to cause confusion among consumers.”
“Consumers are likely to perceive a connection or association as to the source, sponsorship, or affiliation of the parties’ products and services, when in fact none exists, given the similarity of the parties’ logos, trade channels, and consumer bases.”
Well the Beavercreek community didn’t take kindly to a large corporation attempting to bully the mom-and-pop business, which doesn’t have gas pumps and wouldn’t be confused with Buc-ee’s by any rational person (or really any irrational person either). The owner, Vik Boparai, says that the store has experienced increased traffic since the lawsuit became public. There’s even a movement on Facebook encouraging locals to support the small business this Friday and boycott Buc-ee’s, while the owner is vowing to fight back against the corporate giant.
Given all the outcry, Buc-ee’s co-founder and CEO Arch Aplin tried to explain his side of the story – but it doesn’t exactly match with public records.
According to an interview with WHIO, Aplin claims that the owner of Beaver’s Mini Mart had filed a request for a federal trademark, which Buc-ee’s claims violates their own trademark.
The only problem: There’s no record of Beaver’s Mini Mart ever filing for a federal trademark at all.
In a post from Huber Heights, Ohio (the location of the Buc-ee’s at issue) mayor Jeff Gore, he claims that Aplin told him that the owner of the mini mart had requested a federal trademark for “Beavermart.”
“Vik, with Beavermart filed for his own trademark of “Beavermart” at the federal level which would have given him access to set up Beavermarts all across the country. According to Mr. Aplin, that happened just a few months after Buc-ee’s officially announced the Huber Heights location.”
Now, whether “Beavermart” would actually be a violation of Buc-ee’s trademark is certainly up for debate. But it doesn’t really matter in this case because federal trademark records show no applications for either “Beaver’s Mini Mart” or “Beavermart” from Boparai (or anybody). And Gore was later forced to edit his post to clarify that the mom-and-pop shop had actually registered the trade name “Beaver’s Mini Mart” in the state of Ohio only.
According to Gore, the founder of Buc-ee’s says he has no problem with Beaver’s Mini Mart using their current logo or operating in Beavercreek, but “did not want… a series of Beavermarts popping up across the state or regionally or eventually nationally that violated their trademark.” And he says that Buc-ee’s indicated that they would drop the lawsuit if the owner of the mini mart “dropped the Beavermart trademark nationally.”
You can read the full post from Gore with Buc-ee’s side of the story here:
Well, that obviously makes things difficult because…there’s nothing to drop. No federal record for a “Beavermart” or “Beaver’s Mini Mart” trademark nationally, and only a trade name registration in the state of Ohio.
The story from Buc-ee’s is also questionable because the lawsuit makes no mention of Beaver’s Mini Mart attempting to register a federal trademark, something that seems like it would be an important fact if you’re trying to show that somebody’s infringing (or attempting to infringe) on your trademark.
Buc-ee’s general counsel apparently attempted to clean up Aplin’s statement by clarifying that Buc-ee’s actually has a problem with the trade name registration in Ohio, saying that the registration “conflicts with a federally registered trademark held by Buc-ee’s.” But if I’m understanding this correctly, Buc-ee’s is claiming that registering the name “Beaver’s Mini Mart” with the state of Ohio as a trade name is infringing on their federal trademark for a logo of a beaver? Is nobody allowed to use the word “beaver” on a convenience store because Buc-ee’s has a trademark, not for the word “beaver” in relation to convenience stores, but for a logo featuring a beaver?
Buc-ee’s needs to end this nonsense and get back to making brisket. All they’re doing is turning off loyal customers (like myself) and damaging their own reputation.
