What makes small business owners think they can get away with essentially stealing trademarks that belong to major, well-known companies, just by changing them slightly?
Examples just from my town:
The first one, I only heard about, and may have been unintentional. There was a local “foreign car” garage that specialized in European cars. Their name was two words, both starting with the letter “M”. They apparently received a cease-and-desist from Mercedes-Benz because the “M” too closely resembled the “M” in the Mercedes trademark. They simply changed the typeface on their sign, and all was good.
More recent, more blatant examples I’ve seen myself are:
A small Mexican restaurant opened up downtown. It was named “Chile’s” and their sign was clearly, um, “inspired by” (read: was almost identical to) the look of the Chili’s restaurant chain’s logo. That place was shut down fairly quickly. (I’ll note that we don’t have a local Chili’s.)
A local pet supply store opened up, and called itself, “Beds Bones & Beyond”. Again, quickly out of business.
And now, the local natural foods store has added on a small cafe, and the lettering on the window proudly proclaims, “Hot Eats and Raw Treats”, clearly a minor modification of Dairy Queen’s “Hot Eats, Cool Treats” slogan.
What is going through these peoples’ minds when they come up with this stuff? I know there’s a popular misconception that you can get around copyright law by changing 5%-10% of the original material, but even if that’s what these people are thinking, these are trademark issues, which are completely separate from copyright.
). And, IANAL, but my understand is that part of what keeps IP legally protected is if the holder of the IP actively defends themselves against infringements (intentional or not) – “aspirin” is the poster child case of this (though Bayer still holds it as a trademark in some countries, though not in the U.S.)