Even as the beloved, traditional Jewish food establishments of the Lower East Side seem to be locked into an irrecoverable downward spiral — the death of Gertel’s bakery being the most recent example — a war has been raging over who is the legitimate heir to the Guss’s pickle empire that once ruled over Essex Street. ...
Ms. Fairhurst and the Leibowitz family got along at first; she used the Guss name and bought the family’s pickles. That suddenly changed, according to the Leibowitzes, in 2006, when Ms. Fairhurst decided to buy her pickles from another supplier. The Leibowitzes asserted that she would have to stop using the Guss name. They set up a Guss’s Pickles Web site that asserts that theirs are the only true Guss’s Pickles.
Ms. Fairhurst retaliated by filing a federal lawsuit [pdf] in which she denied she was infringing on any trademark. She accused the Leibowitzes of unfair competition and “tortious interference.” The Leibowitz family, in answering the lawsuit [pdf], denied the accusations. The Leibowitzes also filed a counterclaim [pdf] asserting that they have the exclusive right to the Guss’s Pickles trademark....
Meanwhile — as if this could possibly get more complicated — a third pickle business, The Pickle Guys, was started in 2003 by Alan Kaufman and other former employees of Guss’s Pickles. They were dismayed that the original business had left Essex Street, its home for so many years. Mr. Kaufman’s Web site boasts, “Today we are the only pickle store that exists on Essex Street.”
Follow the links for all the juicy details. Guss' was featured in the nostalgic "Crossing Delancy" film of some years back. There is a lively (and punny) commentary on the NYT blog site; so far, sentiment is running in favor of the Pickle Guys for taste, if not legal hegemony.
This will require a field trip for further "law in action" research.
