Pedestrians pass the Boxpark pop-up retail mall in Shoreditch, London. Lawyers for Boxpark have written to Meraas Holding, which is building Boxpark Dubai in the city’s Wasl district, asking the company to “immediately cease and desist its use of the Boxpark name in connection with its proposed container retail development in Dubai,” the company said yesterday.
Bloomberg/Dubai/London
Boxpark, creator of the London shopping centre composed of shipping containers, is demanding that a Dubai state-owned company stop using its trademarked name for a “copycat” project.
Lawyers for Boxpark have written to Meraas Holding, which is building Boxpark Dubai in the city’s Wasl district, asking the company to “immediately cease and desist its use of the Boxpark name in connection with its proposed container retail development in Dubai,” the company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. A spokeswoman for Meraas wasn’t able to immediately respond to questions from Bloomberg.
“We’re a small business and I see it as though they’ve stolen our name and masqueraded it as their own,” Roger Wade, chief executive officer and founder of Boxpark, said in an interview. “We’ve said ‘can we have our name back’ and they’ve just hidden behind very big lawyers and ignored all of our demands.”
Meraas Holding, which is building retail and housing developments across Dubai, designed Boxpark project to include 44 stores, restaurants and cafes, according to the project’s website. It was scheduled to open last month.
London’s Boxpark was built in 2011 and the trademark was registered in the UK, Europe, US and internationally in 2010, the company said.
Boxpark Dubai includes the same combination of shipping containers and concrete structures to create a shopping centre that resembles the London project. Meraas applied for a Boxpark trademark in the UAE in 2013 and was granted the name in September 2014, the UK company said yesterday.
Wade said his company will take legal action if Meraas continues to use the Boxpark name, but he prefers to avoid a costly court battle against Dubai.
“We don’t want to do that,” the CEO said. “We’re just appealing to a sense of fairness.”
