We recently got some pretty terrible news here at 443.
On Friday I received an email from the attorneys representing the Listening Room Cafe in Nashville, TN informing us that we are infringing on their trademark of the name “Listening Room” in connection with a business providing bar, restaurant and live entertainment services. We were obviously not aware of the trademark when we chose the name, The Listening Room at 443.
The name originally came from The Listening Room Acoustic Music Series, which was a 6 month long series I created in 2014 along with my Red Shoes Black Bag Productions partner Joanna Jewett. I chose it for the series because it described the style of show we were producing, and listening room style shows were unusual in Syracuse at that time.
When we were considering possible names for the cafe, we found “Listening Rooms” in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado (two), Louisiana, Maryland (two), Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennesee, Texas, Virginia, Washington (two) and Wisconsin plus a festival in Florida, pop up events all over the country and several radio programs.
Because of the multiple venues around the country that did not appear to be connected and the fact that “Listening Room” is a generic descriptor of a particular style of music venue, we assumed (incorrectly) it was not a name that anyone would be able to trademark. Because we are a brick and mortar local business and the other Listening Rooms were all located in other states, we didn’t think it was likely anyone would confuse us with any of them, though I’ve since discovered one in the Hudson Valley area of NY.
Our intention was not to cause confusion or to be malicious in any way. We have the utmost respect for any venue that is successfully featuring live music on a regular basis.
I have been on other the side of this issue with a business I ran several years ago. A local competitor providing identical services and located just a few miles away began using a domain name nearly identical to mine and it was causing a massive amount of confusion with our customers. It contributed to the decision to shutter the business and 10 years later I’m still paying off legal bills. I have no desire to repeat the experience of a protracted and expensive legal battle, especially since we appear to be in the wrong here.
Does it suck? Sure does. As a two-month-old start-up business, we are still hemorrhaging money and freaking out on a regular basis about the viability of what we are doing. This is a massive project to pile on at a time when we’re already maxed out, stressed out, and not getting much sleep. We will have to add a DBA to our LLC, liquor license, bank and vendor accounts, move our website, change our social media outposts and update printed materials. It’s daunting, to say the least. But shame on us for not investigating the issue more thoroughly. The Nashville cafe is well within their rights to enforce their trademark, I’m just shocked that it exists in the first place.
On the bright side, I suppose it’s better that it happened two months in rather than two years in, right?
We are exploring other possible names and will settle on our final choice by the end of the week. Stay tuned for our upcoming announcement.
