A while back on this blog we introduced you to the story of the chef-restaurateur Danny Brown and his contretemps with the chef-restaurateur Daniel Boulud. Mr. Brown e-mailed me early this morning to say that the battle had ended, and not in his favor.
Here’s a quick refresher: Mr. Brown opened a restaurant in Forest Hills, Queens, and on the signs for it and on its menus, he alternately called it Danny Brown Wine Bar & Kitchen and db Wine Bar & Kitchen.
The latter name did not go over well with Mr. Boulud, who has a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan called db bistro moderne. What’s more, the logo Mr. Brown developed for his place had visual similarities to the logo Mr. Boulud uses for his place.
Mr. Boulud’s representatives threatened legal action if Mr. Brown didn’t rectify what they saw as a matter of trademark infringement, and negotiations ensued.
Meanwhile, in a delicious twist first reported by the web site Eater.com, Mr. Boulud drew the same sort of complaint from a lawyer for the downtown music club CBGB because he was reportedly contemplating the name DBGB for a burger place near the club.
The initials stood for Daniel Boulud Good Burger, and a preliminary (and, according to Mr. Boulud’s representatives, unofficial) logo that was making the rounds looked an awful lot like CBGB’s logo.
Back to Mr. Brown. I’m trying to reach him to find out whether the dispute between him and Mr. Boulud actually ended up in court, or whether it was just hashed out in meetings, phone calls and letters between lawyers. His e-mail was brief and ambiguous.
But on one point it was clear: he lost.
“I have changed all my logos,” he wrote me, providing photo documentation of the old awnings coming down and new ones going up.
“We are now danny brown Wine Bar & Kitchen,” he announced. And so the story, apparently, ends.
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