There can be only one Mod.
Denver’s Modmarket is rebranding as Modern Market because of a trademark dispute between it and MOD Pizza, another fast-casual restaurant chain.
“We’re expanding really rapidly,” said Anthony Pigliacampo, who co-founded Modmarket in 2009. “We thought there was too much overlap in terms of our names to expand the ways we wanted to. It’s more modifying our name than changing it.”
After all, he said, Modmarket has been referenced as shorthand for Modern Market.
The move to Modern Market followed a legal squabble between it and MOD Pizza, a Bellevue, Wash.-company founded in 2008.
The companies butted heads after “five years of peaceful coexistence,” U.S. District Court documents say.
Both companies have aspirations for national expansion, heightening MOD Pizza’s concerns that it would be harmed by consumer confusion, according to court documents filed this year. MOD Pizza also lost a bid to open a shop at Denver International Airport, where there is a Modmarket mini-shop, because the names were too similar.
Modmarket sued MOD Super Fast Pizza LLC hoping for a non-infringement judgment. Both MOD Pizza and Modmarket received approvals from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for their respective marks.
MOD Pizza, which has three-dozen locations, including stores in Centennial and Colorado Springs, later filed a counterclaim stating it had senior trademark rights that Modmarket infringed.
A settlement was reached in August. The terms were not disclosed.
“Sometimes the tide doesn’t break your way,” Pigliacampo said.
Trademark disputes such as this are fairly common, especially in the crowded restaurant market, said Emily Holmes, an intellectual property attorney at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck in Denver.
Trademark approval doesn’t necessarily mean that the mark will not infringe on third-party rights, she said. Holmes recommends companies use an attorney to conduct a comprehensive search.
“Unless you’ve really done a comprehensive search, you don’t really know what’s out there,” she said.
And the search should be done early on, she said. “It’s not just the hard costs of changing signs, but it’s the potential loss of recognition among customers.”
The changes to Modern Market will come over the next three months, Pigliacampo said.
Modern Market operates 14 locations in Colorado and Texas. The company plans to
opening 10 to 15 locations per year starting in 2016.
“We want to be a national brand,” co-founder Rob McColgan told the Association for Corporate Growth Denver’s monthly luncheon in August.
Alicia Wallace: 303-954-1939, awallace@denverpost.com or @aliciawallace
