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This is from a recent article from North Jersey

Rival indian grocers sue over common ground

By HUGH R. MORLEY
STAFF WRITER

What's in a name?

A lot if you're an Indian grocer, it seems.

Especially if you're a Patel.

The surname -- which is as common among people of Asian-Indian descent as Smith or Johnson is among Anglos – has sparked a brief but bitter dispute involving one of the largest vendors of specialty foods to the Indian community.

A suit filed by Patel Brothers, a Chicago-based food distributor with a chain of 27 stores, accuses an Iselin-based store of violating a trademark when it opened last month using the name "Patel Food Market." A Patel Brothers grocery -- Patel's Cash & Carry -- is across the street.

The case was settled last week, and both sides declined to comment. But the court papers offer a window into the fierce competition among Indian grocers, the importance of the Patel name, and the issue of whether companies can legally protect common names or words.

It's not unusual to see businesses with the same name. After all, the question "Which was the original Ray's Pizza?" has sparked many a debate. Google the words Smith & Sons, and you get numerous like-named businesses, including sellers of real estate, umbrellas, insurance and books. Businesses called "Acme" abound.

The proliferation of Patels becomes apparent when you look around Iselin's so-called Little India, in the heart of the state's Indian-American community. Within a few blocks of Patel Food Market, there is a Patel Video, a Patel Phone Card and a Patel Vasan Bhandar, a kitchenware store.

Many Patels come from the state of Gujarat in northwestern India, where family ties and the instinct for commerce are strong. New York-based Little India magazine estimates that there are more than 140,000 Patels in the United States, a large chunk of them in the economy motel business, which is dominated by Indian-Americans.

The prevalence of the name could have made it hard for Patel Brothers to win such a suit, said Frank Pasquale, associate professor of law at Seton Hall Law School.

"Surnames are weak as trademarks," he said, "because the courts don't want to protect you instead of me. The courts want to permit business owners to name their stores after their last names unless another prior competitor clearly has associated a product or service with the last name."

The court would look at the similarity of the names, the similarity of the products sold in each business and whether the second person to adopt the name did so to try to trade off the first one's reputation, he said.

"The judge would be looking at the meaning of the Patel name in the community," he added. "When people see 'Patel,' when consumers in Indian groceries see 'Patel,' do they think 'Patel' just means the last name of the owner -- or do they think it means a larger corporation that owns all the businesses?"

In Iselin, the Patel Food Market opened on Memorial Day weekend across the street from Patel's Cash & Carry. Another store 100 yards away -- Subzi Mandi -- adds to the intense competition.

"You cannot believe it -- it's cutthroat," said Nismith Vyas, who owns a small cellphone-connection business inside the Subzi Mandi store.

"The regular customer will switch if they find something is 50 cents cheaper," he said.

"That's what the competition is all about."

The Patel name can give vendors an edge, he said, because it is well-known.

"People trust it," he said. "Sometimes people whose last name is not Patel open a store under 'Patel.' "

Patel Brothers -- which also does business as V. Patel and Sons Inc. -- operates two stores in Iselin and one in Jersey City.

It also owns Raja Foods, an importer and distributor of rice, breads, spices, curries and other specialties from India. The $64-million-a-year business is run by Rakesh and Swetal Patel, whose father started the company in 1974.

Rupa Ranganathan, senior vice president at New York-based Strategic Research Institute, said Patel Brothers and Subzi Mandi are probably the biggest players in the Indian ethnic-food business in the Northeast.

"The grocery shopping experience is more than just the functional task of going and picking up vegetables," she said. "You go there to mingle. You go there to buy goods and you feel that you have gone to India for a little while."

Patel Brothers' suit said that since 1991 it has registered four trademarks that contain "Patel." Although "Patel Food Market" was not one of them, it's close enough to hurt Patel Brothers, said their attorney Charles Quinn of Morristown.

"In our view, it created a likelihood of confusion in the eyes of the consumer," he said, declining to comment further.

Swetal Patel filed an affidavit saying he hired two off-duty Woodbridge Township police officers to handle the expected heavy flow of traffic during the Memorial Day weekend. But the officers mistakenly reported to Patel Food Market, where they worked and were paid by the owner, the affidavit said.

The lawsuit -- filed April 24 in U.S. District Court in Newark -- tried to stop the soon-to-open rival store from using the names Patel Food Market, Patel Foods or Patel Food Mart. The suit claimed that their use would cause Patel Brothers "irreparable harm and damages."

Rakesh Patel declined to comment on the suit. So did Mukund Patel, an owner of Patel Food Market. Papers filed by him and other owners -- who have Patel Food Markets in Jersey City and Somerset -- said they have run a store with the same name in Parlin for years with no complaints from Patel Brothers.

But the Chicago company became concerned after Patel Food Market began importing products from India under the name "Patel Foods," court papers say.

A few weeks earlier, Patel Brothers had opened their own Somerset store.

Mukund Patel said in court papers that after a confrontation about the name in April, Patel Brothers refused to supply its food to any of the Patel Food Markets, rejecting business worth $750,000 a year.

Mukund Patel said he had worked for Patel Brothers and had known one of the owners since they were children growing up in India.

He said he saw no problem with his company's use of the Patel name, adding that he knew of at least two foods stores in Pennsylvania, two in New Jersey and three others around the country that carry the name.

"Shoppers in Little India undoubtedly are well-familiar with the fact that the name Patel is one of the most common names among Asian Indians," he said in a court affidavit. "There is no expectation among this population that people having the name Patel in common are related to one another."

Fast facts

Patel is one of the most common names in the Indian-American community.

·  Where: Patels come from Gujarat or Madhya Pradesh, a wealthy region in northwest India. "Patel" means farmer or landowner.

·  Number in the U.S.: 140,000.

·  Immigration: Patels have immigrated in large numbers worldwide. One in five Indian immigrants in the U.S. comes from Gujarat.

·  Hotels: Patels make up a majority of the members of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, which represents half the economy hotels in the United States.

Sources: Wikipedia, Little India magazine, Asian American Hotel Owners Association

 

·  The name game

Legal disputes over business names are common. Here are some recent ones.

·  The Beatles and their record company, Apple Corps, tried to stop Apple Computer from using the name and logo. Last month, a British court ruled against The Beatles.

·  De Beers LV Ltd., the international diamond mining company, successfully sued to stop a New York diamond dealer from using the name DeBeers Diamond Syndicate Ltd.

·  Toy giant Mattel sued a small Montreal restaurant chain, Barbie's, which used the name as a play on the words "bar" and "barbecue." The Canadian Supreme Court ruled against Mattel this month after a 12-year fight.

·  Neiman Marcus filed suit in Florida against a pet store called "Neiman Barkus: The House of Doggy Style." The owner closed the store last month, saying he couldn't afford the legal fight.

·  A Calgary-based information technology service firm called The Geek Patrol sued Best Buy, which has technicians that go under the same name.

Sources: Dow Jones, The Globe and Mail, Miami Herald, The Calgary Herald, Star Tribune

 

Tip #23

Home Buying Tip, Big Ticket Items:
Before you buy a home you should avoid buying any big ticket items.  When this is found out during the credit process or reporting it can make mortgage banks nervous.

Even if you will be able to get a loan, you might not be able to get the best available interest rate.

 

Tip #24

Home Selling Tip, Listing Right:
A common mistake when people list their house (especially in a buyers’ market) is list the house at a high price that they don’t anticipate to sell it at.  They figure that if they get it then GREAT but if not they can always lower the price.

This is not a good practice because what mostly happens is it will stay on the market for a while and make potential home buyers nervous because it’s been on the market so long.