Kettering restaurant changes name after legal threat from London venue
A Kettering restaurant has changed its name months after opening following a legal threat from a venue which was already using it.
A taste of Africa came to town when Katherine and Daniel Ememere welcomed their first customers to Aso Rock in February.
But the name of the Rockingham Road venue angered a London family-run restaurant which has been called Aso Rock since 1999, although it wasn’t trademarked.
They started legal action – saying diners were mistaking it as being affiliated with them – and after a row which even saw the police called the Kettering venue has now changed its name to Zuma Rock.
Ayo Adesina, whose father Sunday opened Aso Rock in London, said: “I’m not having it. They have picked on the wrong person, the wrong company and the wrong family. We are trying to go national and we cannot have some random shop somewhere that people think is associated with us.”
Katherine said they did not see anything with the same name when they registered it on Companies House last year and that there was ‘no way’ they would have known – but that the name wasn’t worth fighting over.
She said: “This is not a necessary battle. We would rather spend our time building our business than fighting over what our name is.”
The row began in January this year when Ayo, who runs his Nigerian restaurant in Dalston with relatives, started getting calls about him opening a store in Kettering.
But it was news to him – and he still didn’t believe it was real when he saw the sign for the Kettering venue.
He said: “When I saw a picture of the sign I thought it was done by AI – I thought my friend was just winding me up.”
When Ayo realised it was real he wrote a cease and desist letter, explaining that his restaurant which delivers across the capital had been using the name for 25 years, and delivered it by hand to the Ememeres’ home in Corby. He also filed a trademark application for the restaurant name Aso Rock, which is named after a monolith outside the Nigerian capital Abuja and the presidential villa.
What followed was an angry row between both sides, which each accused each other of being abusive, and police even called to a confrontation between them in Kettering.
Ayo complained to Nominet about the Kettering restaurant’s website domain name, which now appears to be disabled, and asked for it as well as their sign and a contribution to his legal costs.
He said people had ordered food from the London restaurant’s website using a Kettering address, which they said they would collect thinking it was the Northamptonshire venue, which Ayo then had to refund. He also said he had received complaints about a dish they don’t even sell.
The Ememeres have since changed their restaurant name to Zuma Rock, with a different website domain and updated Google listing, and say they plan to change their sign above the door by the end of June.
Ayo said he does yet not have ownership of the Aso Rock domain they were originally using – and he’s applied for it as well as making a ‘passing off’ claim.
Katherine, who will also be opening a restaurant in Corby this year, said they did everything legally.
She said: “If he wants to go to court we will meet him there.”
But London man Ayo said he’s confident a court would rule in his favour.
He said: “Over the years at Aso Rock we’ve had different challenges and this is another one of them but we’re still standing, solid as a rock.
“It might take a bit of time, but it’s another challenge and we will beat them.”