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Comment by thefalcon | Hacker News Reader

There's protecting your brand, and then there's whatever the heck it is Trader Joe's did here, which seems senseless and malevolent.

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Aldi Nord (owner of TJ) has done such an incredibly poor job of expanding the Trader Joe's brand outside of the USA. For example, all you get in their German stores are some random crappy products with the TJ label.

It makes so little sense to go after this tiny company when you're not even competing in Canada. Which they probably should! I'm sure there's demand in cities like Toronto for the actual unique products that TJ offers.

A previous article on Pirate Joe's (http://www.piratejoes.ca/legalandpress/2016/1/16/how-why) mentions that Michael Hallatt, the guy behind Pirate Joe's, said he'd close up shop if the real Trader Joe's ever moved into Canada.

There is demand in Toronto. I am sitting in Toronto, and I still crave a lot of the good stuff I bought there when I lived in Seattle.

I can't believe they opened stores in Germany, but never bothered to open one in Vancouver, where there was proven demand for their products.

There are no Trader Joe's stores in Germany. It was bought in 1979 by the German family that owns the Aldi Nord chain of discount stores[0]. That German chain uses the Trader Joe's brand for some American-themed fast food ingredients, nuts, and sweet ice tea.

[0]: Which is different from the Aldi Süd chain of discount stores which runs stores under the "Aldi" brand in the US.

I'm sitting in Toronto, and am in the process of getting my Canadian citizenship. One of the things I was looking forward to was getting a Canadian passport and having easier jaunts in to upstate New York for Trader Joe's runs.

Especially when you can reap all the benefits of increased sales without having to pay for real estate or employees. Seems they're cutting off their nose to spite their face.

When I lived in Germany I always despised Aldi Nord. Aldi Süd was always cleaner and seemed to just be better in every aspect. It always annoyed me that there for obvious reason was no competition between the two because I would have loved for Süd to drive Nord out.

Trademark law takes a kind of defend-it-or-lose-it approach to brand protection. It's not malevolence, so much as that if they don't litigate, their rights can evaporate.

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