Trader Joe’s has die-hard fans. It’s the place to buy mandarin orange chicken on the cheap or the U.S. grocery chain’s famous everything bagel seasoning.
But now a crypto operation has a nearly identical name, and the food titan is going to court.
Trader Joe’s has escalated a more than two-year battle with the decentralized finance (DeFi) crypto trading platform Trader Joe, filing a lawsuit in early October in Central District of California that alleges trademark infringement and unfair competition. The U.S. district court sent a civil summons to the defendants last Tuesday.
The platform, which sometimes brands itself as Trader Joe XYZ, is the eleventh-largest in DeFi, according to data provider DefiLlama, with some $20 million in trading volume in a 24-hour period to Friday.
Trader Joe’s didn’t respond to two requests for comment from Barron’s made through the company website. Trader Joe didn’t reply to messages from Barron’s sent to its account on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Defendants’ ‘Trader Joe’ branding is designed to allow them to commercially profit from Trader Joe’s famous mark and broader reputation by causing confusion as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of Defendants’ website and services and by trading on Trader Joe’s hard-earned goodwill and name recognition,” the lawsuit alleged.
Unlike centralized exchanges such as
Coinbase Global
(ticker: COIN), DeFi platforms facilitate peer-to-peer trading in tokens, such as
Bitcoin,
without an intermediary, through the use of software called smart contracts. DeFi platforms also typically offer more esoteric crypto financial services, such as earning interest from providing liquidity to trading pools.
The decentralization of the platform has complicated Trader Joe’s efforts to stop what it views as trademark infringement. The DeFi group’s founders are anonymous and the contact page of its website links only to an account for the platform on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Trader Joe’s first sent a cease-and-desist email to the platform in September 2021, according to the lawsuit. In January 2022, the grocery chain followed up with a letter to an employee of the platform, asking for contact details for its founders.
In May 2022, Trader Joe’s filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations agency, against Cheng Chieh Liu of Singapore; in July of that year, the organization denied Trader’s Joe’s complaint, according to an administrative panel decision.
Liu said the platform was named for his brother, Joe, which was a false origin story, according to the lawsuit.
The dispute has played out during times that have turned turbulent for the digital asset markets. When Trader Joe’s sent its first warning to the platform, Bitcoin prices hovered between $45,000 and $50,000—the largest token was changing hands below $27,000 on Friday.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
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