June 22, 2003
Prufock: Sugar v Easyjet, the online punch-up
IF you’re going to pick a fight it’s always best to make sure you have a good chance of winning.
This is especially true if your opponent happens to be the forthright Amstrad entrepreneur Sir Alan Sugar. But if the other party is the equally larger-than-life Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the man who started Easyjet, it’s hard to tell who might come out best.
Back in 2001 Haji-Ioannou sent a minion to Amstrad to see if Sugar’s e-mailer device could interact with Haji-Ioannou’s Easyjet website. Sugar spent a year and a reasonable amount of wedge adjusting his web browser to accommodate the Easyjet site. A meeting eventually took place in January this year at which it was agreed that a six-week trial would be run to measure the traffic to the Easyjet site.
In March, Sugar was just a little surprised to receive a letter from Steven Walker at Norton Rose threatening legal action for the “unauthorised reproduction” of the Easyjet trademark, which he claimed was copyright infringement.
Sugar wrote back saying he was surprised to get the letter: “Amstrad had gained nothing from this exercise and Easyjet has received free advertising to generate 3,400 hits and inquiries to its website.” He told Walker to “take instructions from someone at your client who knows what he or she is doing”.
Four days later Walker relented: “Our clients have no intention to commence legal proceedings . . . Easyjet is in a state of flux and . . . has made significant changes in and additions to its personnel.”
Sugar replied, sarcastically: “The terminology that ‘Easyjet is in a state of flux’ is rather generous to say the least and one only hopes they administer the maintenance and safety of their aircraft in a far more efficient and professional manner than they do their marketing department.
“You can be assured that no- body from this company will ever approach this bunch of idiots until perhaps they have been taken over or fired by people who know what they are doing.”
It’s lucky that Easyjet is not a stock-market company with thousands of investors who might be perturbed by this incompetence. Oops, it is. Round one to Sugar.