American grocery store chain Trader Joe’s filed a trademark lawsuit against DEX Trader Joe’s due to its “too similar” name. Blockworks reports.
The company accused the platform and its co-founder Cheng Chi Liu of deliberate identity theft. Lawyers say the exchange created a story around a fictitious “Trader Joe” closely associated with the supermarket brand.
The lawsuit also says that the exchange’s logo copies the color scheme of the original. The DEX image shows a farmer wearing a red cap, while the supermarket chain simply uses the same color lettering.
According to court documents, co-founder Liu is a Chinese citizen residing in Singapore. He is listed as the owner of the domain traderjoexyz.com.
The prosecution claims that during the confrontation, representatives of the platform tried to hide the history of the origin of the branding and the character itself.
“Defendants did not seek or obtain permission from Trader Joe’s to name their platform after Trader Joe’s,” the statement said.
The exchange’s use of a well-known trademark allows them to benefit commercially from the grocery chain’s more global reputation, lawyers say.
According to Token Terminal, Trader Joe was launched in 2021 by an anonymous team and runs on the Avalanche blockchain as a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange service. Initially, the project was a fork of SushiSwap.
DEX developers always use pseudonyms, including within the company.
“Concealing one’s identity from both outsiders and from each other in day-to-day business dealings demonstrates an intent to evade detection, undermine the legal process, and act without legal consequences,” the food company’s lawyers said.
The original Trader Joe’s is seeking a court order to stop the exchange from using its trademark and images. The company is also asking for the rights to the domain name to be returned and for any additional damages.
Let us recall that in November 2021, the heirs of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, won the case against the creator of the JRR Token coin. He was ordered to remove all offending content and pay legal costs.
In 2023, the creator of the Grumpy Cat token based on the “grumpy cat” meme, Glauber Contessoto, was accused of copyright infringement.
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