FRISCO — A Frisco popcorn store with "peace and love" in its name is getting anything but peace and love from another store near Chicago.
The Illinois establishment claims they used the name first.
Two years ago, Gary Paparella opened a popcorn store at Frisco Square. His 19-year-old daughter Meagan helped him come up with a catchy name.
“She drew a heart, the peace sign and a piece of popcorn. She put the letters underneath it," Paparella said.
The Paparellas then took their name and logo to the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, which made them change their proposed name ever so slightly because of a McKinney popcorn business on El Dorado Parkway.
“We originally wanted to call it 'Peace, Love and Popcorn.' But we switched to 'Love, Peace and Popcorn' because of a store in McKinney called 'I Love Popcorn,'" Paparella explained.
But now, their chosen name is at the center of a lawsuit filed by a 30-year-old company out of Lake Forest, Illinois. The owners of the Popcorn Factory are suing Paparella for trademark infringement, cyber-squatting and unfair competition.
They claim the 'Love, Peace and Popcorn' design trademark is confusingly similar to Popcorn Factory's previously established 'Peace, Love and Popcorn' design.
The owners of the Illinois company said they've been using their logo and slogan for two years. They sent catalogs to millions of consumers who have spendt hundreds of thousands of dollars buying their products with the "Peace, Love and Popcorn" mark.
But Paparella insists that he went through the proper channels to register his slogan with the federal government. “In our eyes, we believe that if you register a trademark, it's your mark," he said. "You registered it; you own it," he said.
Attorneys for the Popcorn Factory did not return phone calls from News 8. They're asking Paparella to not only stop using the name, but also to hand over all his profits since he started using it.
A Frisco lawyer who helps companies secure patents and trademarks says something like this only happens occasionally, where businesses have the same or similar names, slogans or logos. But he says even if they're not registered with the government, they still may have exclusivity rights if they started using it first.
E-mail sstoler@wfaa.com
