Boss of easyfundraising vows to fight easyJet owner’s trademark claim

The head of the charity shopping site easyfundraising has vowed to continue fighting a trademark claim brought by easyGroup, the owners of easyJet, over its name. The UK’s biggest charity shopping site, which works with brands to donate a percentage of every sale to a worthy cause, was issued with legal proceedings from easyGroup last year. EasyGroup claims the company name infringes on its “easy” brand, which other companies pay annual royalties to use. The case is scheduled to reach court next summer. “The paperwork arrived completely out of the blue. EasyJet, bizarrely, used to advertise on our platform,” said easyfundraising’s CE, James Moir. “It has been an incredibly slow and drawn-out process. With this hanging over us, it’s a stress, a distraction, a cost which would be much better spent trying to make our services better,” he said. “But we want to keep fighting and hopefully we’ll be able to do that.” Easyfundraising said its company trademark had been approved in 2010, and Moir added that “the look, feel, colour and logo” was not remotely similar to the easyGroup branding. “We find the whole thing incredulous, because there is no crossover and no similarity whatsoever between what we’re doing and any member of easyGroup,” he said. “We’re ultimately trying to deliver a service here that helps charities, so we do feel it’s a bit mean. They’ve got much, much deeper pockets that us, and it feels like they’re doing absolutely everything they can to drag this out.”<br/>