Many think LoLo is shorthand for Lower Lonsdale, but it’s Hawaiian slang and North Vancouver restauranteur Scott McArthur trademarked it 12 years ago
There’s a spat brewing in North Vancouver between a small independent restaurateur and an East Vancouver brewery that recently opened a restaurant at Lonsdale Quay.
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It’s a term McArthur trademarked in 2013, and also one his restaurant has employed on wall decals and menu boards since the bistro opened in 1999, he said.
McArthur plans to appeal that challenge.
“We’ve used it ever since the beginning, to distinguish the restaurant,” McArthur said.
Now he wants to rebrand and rename Raglan’s (named after a popular surf spot in New Zealand) as “LoLo, The Little Beach Shack,” and feels Strathcona’s drink will confuse diners and imbibers.
A keen surfer, McArthur was reading some pulp fiction set in Hawaii and came across the word lolo, Hawaiian slang for goofy or loopy.
He’s also a fan of El Caminos, an old Chevy utility vehicle that, unlike a standard pickup, had a station-wagon cab ahead of the cargo bed. The vehicle was popular with low-riders, originally people who lowered the bodies of their vehicles, putting them closer to the ground with customized hydraulics.
Those low-ride vehicles were also nicknamed lolos.
“It was a confluence of things,” McArthur said. “A light bulb went on, I realized it lined up with Lower Lonsdale.”
After municipal officials and some other businesses began appropriating the term LoLo as a neighbourhood designation, McArthur trademarked it.
“I trademarked it for a reason,” he said. “Strathcona is creating confusion, eroding the distinctiveness of my trademark.”
As a business owner you don’t have to intend to hurt someone else’s business, Brechtel added, that you can do it accidentally and still get yourself in legal trouble.
“It’s a story I see day in and day out,” he said.
“The short answer as to what happens next is the same thing that should happen in every case like this, which is that reasonable business people put their heads together and come to some sort of solution.
“If that doesn’t happen, then what happens is Section 45 continues and at the same time a lawsuit starts, because those things happen in parallel.”
The Trademark Act falls under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.
Section 45 of the Act says anyone may request to have a trademark registration removed, or expunged, from the register unless the trademark owner can prove use of the trademark in Canada over the preceding three years.
McArthur pointed to a menu featuring a drink called the LoLo Caesar.
“We’ve used LoLo for a long time in alcohol, which is known as first-use concept,” he said.
“(Strathcona) did no due diligence.”