Local Donut Shop Illegally Refers to Super Bowl By Name In Window Flyer

By Burton Cantera, Quilt staff

DATELINE: ROSCOE BOULEVARD 

A Canoga Park donut shop, or donuteria, brazenly flouted trademark ownership law this weekend by advertising a “Superbowl [sic] Special” on a flyer on the window of its front door. 

The allegedly copyright-defying flyer.
Photo courtesy Téodor Pasternak.

Peppy Donuts on Roscoe Boulevard at DeSoto, in Canoga Park's bustling RoscoSoto neighborhood, is offering twelve donuts for a discounted price during the morning of Sunday, February 1. But in doing so, the shop refers to the championship game by its actual trademarked name rather than an awkward approximation formed by a series of vaguely similar words to obliquely describe it, as mandated by federal law. 

“This can leave them wide open to an expensive lawsuit by the notoriously litigious NFL,” notes intellectual property lawyer Lou Steimart with the firm Steinmart, Marshall & Korvette. “But I think such an inconsequential example by a small business will probably fly under the radar.” 

Not so, according to a customer seen snapping a picture of the flyer with his phone with one hand while holding a just-purchased cup of coffee and a half-eaten donut with the other.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love this place,” says Peppy Donuts regular Téodor Pasternak. “But this flyer...! Misspellings, typos, excessive punctuation, cluttered layout, stolen clip art with watermarks on it - all that I can forgive. But the dollar sign after the numerals? Sorry, that I won’t stand for.” 

Pasternak later returned with his laptop to make use of the shop's free wi-fi to find specific email addresses for the appropriate individual or department within the National Football League organization and their legal counsel to forward the photo of the flagrant trademark violation to "and to get another one of those crullers - man, those things are addictive!"