Thursday, May 1, 2014

A Softee spot for legal battles



Hey, you remember a few weeks ago when we posted the above photo (thank you arrows!) of the Master Softee truck on East 14th Street... and there were comments about lawsuits between Mister Softee and Master Softee and all that?

Sure EV!

Well, the Daily News has a piece on all this lawsuit stuff today if you are interested...

The New Jersey-based owner of the ubiquitous ice cream trucks is suing a rogue Queens vendor, charging he opened his depot in Long Island City to peddle a knockoff version.

A mix of about two dozen nearly identical Master Softee and Mister Softee trucks are lined up inside and outside Dimitrios Tsirkos’s 11th St. garage.

The fledgling business has soured tempers throughout Mister Softee headquarters in South Jersey and its franchisees across Queens and the Bronx. Owner Jim Conway cried trademark infringement in a March lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court and demanded Tsirkos drop the Softee con.

“They want to confuse the public,” said Conway, who is no stranger to the courthouse. His 58-year-old family-owned company has spent “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in legal fees since the mid-1990s chasing down copycats in more than 10 cases.

Read the whole article here.

H/T Eater

Previously on EV Grieve:
So what's the deal with 'Master Softee?' (20 comments)

4 comments:

4:44 pm said...

Avoid the lawsuit and just change its name to Master Hardee, or Master Batee. Hand served and hard served.

Anonymous said...

How about Master Baiter?

Anonymous said...

Who owns the copy cat trucks any chance Samsung?

Anonymous said...

Dairy Queen could not get pregnant cause she went out with master softee, both related to the snail, insectoid hitlery the hermaphrodite.