Yeah, I just don't understand capitalists that actively fight against capitalizing on clear opportunities. I would have just opened a store down the street or something.
What we have here is a COO/CEO asleep at the wheel. One of the CEOs most important jobs is to watch the legal department for signs they're about to draw the old foot-gun and start playing "this little piggy" with company toes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverherzfeld/2013/02/28/failu...
motivated entirely by fear/anger of any perceived change
Oh don't be such a baby, that's like saying engineering departments made up of social cripples who can't hold a conversation like regular business people.
Legal departments are like nervous little dogs who bark at everything. The CEO is the one who has to decide if the potential loss in PR is worth the upside of any given legal action (this case is a good example where it probably wasn't).
The lawyers on staff will do because they can sometimes to justify their jobs (or on retainer will do because billable hours). The CEO has to decide if they should.
Civil courts do not exist outside of the real world. There are consequences to how you use them.
Suppose they had shrugged this off and done nothing. Then a year later I, a rival grocer, open 'Trader Moe's' and open up 50 stores using a very similar business model to Trader Joe's. TJ sues, and my defense is that 'Pirate Joe's infringed on their mark and they did nothing, so I assumed they had abandoned their rights.
This is an affirmative defense in trademark law, by statute, specifically 15 U.S.C. § 1127 A good summary is at http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/248
Unlike copyright and patents, trademark durations are infinite, but the price for this is that the owner must aggressively defend any possible infringement or risk a competitor claiming abandonment.
If you were the Chief Marketing Officer of Trader Joe's and I was the CEO, I'd fire you for not knowing this.