EasyJet founder Stelios aggressively pursues ‘brand thieves’.

Greek Cypriot tycoon Stelios Haji-Ioannou, whose easyGroup still has links to the carrier, has set out to protect the ‘easy’ brand by threatening legal action against anyone deemed to be profiting from the name .

An official complaint by the man known simply as Stelios recently forced British indie pop band Easy Life, which also adorns posters with an aircraft bearing a resemblance to an easyJet plane, to change its name. He chose Hard Life.

EasyGroup owns the licenses for several entities under the name “easy”. The pop group took to social media when EasyJet sued, saying it lacked the funds to defend itself in what could be a lengthy legal dispute.

To be sure, the airline group only filed their trademark application for the name “Easylife” in 2020, several years after the band’s formation. However, easyGroup sought to protect the “easy” prefix because it owns many companies with similar names, such as easyCinema and easyBooking.

‘Easy come easy go’

“The problem with small brand thieves, if left unchecked, is that they become profitable and grow,” an easyGroup spokesman told AFP about the many ongoing lawsuits.

“Most of these cases never come to court because the brand thieves realize they were wrong and make changes to easyGroup’s satisfaction,” he added.

Hard Life still nods to its past, with the band’s account on X carrying the headline message “easy come, easy go”.

Before releasing a new song in June, he wrote on the social media platform: “It’s safe to say the last nine months haven’t been easy.”

EasyGroup and Stelios, who lives in Monaco, insist their actions are in the consumer’s best interest to avoid confusion and preserve the company’s image.

The spokesperson added that “the majority of easyGroup’s profits” go to the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation.

The easyGroup model sees it receive royalties from licensing its brand to third parties. It receives, for example, 0.25 percent of easyJet’s revenue, while the Haji-Ioannou family still owns 15 percent of the carrier.

There are around 1,200 official ‘light’ brands, from gambling business easyBet to easyGym, easyHotel and dating site easyWoo – many of which feature the same font and orange/white color scheme.

“David and Goliath”

Unofficial “easy” companies contacted by AFP cited colossal legal fees as the reason they withdraw and change their names when pursued by easyGroup.

“Being a small business, it was incredibly difficult to keep up financially with the lawyers’ fees, so for me I’m happy to put that behind me,” said Jozsef Spekker, owner of Stoke Jetwash.

The driveway cleaning business was known as Easy Jetwash until August.

The new name takes its name from the town where the small business is based in central England.

A specialist in intellectual property law at the London School of Economics, Luke McDonagh, described such cases as “David and Goliath battles”.

“Some people call this a brand of bullying, where essentially Goliath takes a case against a David, a small company that really doesn’t have the resources and can’t fight back,” he told AFP.

“It’s not just easyGroup, it would be wrong to single them out, many big companies are doing this,” he added, citing Apple, L’Oreal and Sky television as prime examples.

McDonagh believes easyGroup, whose branding extends to cruise company easyBoat and household products firm easyCleaning, “has gone too far in taking so many cases against these small entities”.

“The purpose of trademark law is not to grant an unlimited monopoly over a word. It might be different if it was a completely made-up word, but ‘easy’ is such a common word in the English language that other companies must be able to use it in a reasonable way.”

EasyGroup has enjoyed “many legal victories (recorded) over the years,” the spokesman said.

Even though it doesn’t always seem like a battle of equals, Stelios has lost a few challenges because of the brand name. In 2018, for example, the group lost a case against car dealer Arnold Clark over the name of its payment system, Easy Pay.

Earlier this month, Easyfundraising, a nearly 20-year-old company based in Staffordshire, won a legal battle against EasyGroup along similar lines.

The High Court in London has ruled in favor of online platform easyfundraising, which hopes to recover around £1.0 million ($1.3 million) in legal fees, despite an appeal against the company.

“It is telling that EasyGroup has not been able to produce a single piece of evidence to show that there was ever any customer confusion,” Easyfundraising chief executive James Moir told the BBC. Stelios, on the other hand, said he would appeal the decision because he was “disappointed” by it.

“It’s like a war of attrition and they just hope that eventually the companies give in because it’s too long, it’s too much hassle, it’s too expensive,” Moir told AFP.