Hacker News Reader

Comment by ForrestN | Hacker News Reader

Does this have any relation to the world-famous restaurant, sometimes in the past ranked as the #1 restaurant in the world, of the same name?

View on HN

Hi -- I'm the co-owner of Alinea... the restaurant and group.

While they are in different industries, I owned a derivatives trading group for years, run a tech startup (Tock), and am getting a bunch of emails from folks thinking I started this or am affiliated in some way.

So... while I dislike conflict, I really don't like be associated with something I have no control over. There will be an incoming email shortly.

Very interesting background, what made you move from finance to restaurants to tech?

Nick wrote an epic piece about what motivated his company to create what eventually became Tock:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190407042116/https://www.aline...

(good to see you here, Nick. big fan!)

Great interview with Nick about this and other topics:

https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/20135760/kokonas-know-...

I was about to post something like, haha, the founders didn't do their homework but after checking if there's any brand registered, there isn't. So what do you mean by, there will be an incoming mail shortly? Will you ask them to change their name and if yes, on which basis?

Amazing. FWIW to the Alinea (YC W21) folks, I felt your name, branding/colors, and logo felt completely off and strange. Good time to change it up?

Edit: And fonts. Modern edgy logo font and the website complimentary font is a bit... Crayola. Not dogging on you all, I'm sure having this be a focus of your launch isn't fun for all your hard work. It's a really neat idea.

Ditto on using this opportunity for a design and brand change, the purple is overwhelming and even the name for a mass market brand is tough IMO. Do you pronounce it Ah-lean-ah? A-lin-euh? A-lien-ah? Not obvious and if you're thinking about leaning on WOM its a tough word because people might hear it and google 'alina' and miss you entirely

> There will be an incoming email shortly

To the founders: ignore their email and consult your lawyer.

Trademark infringement generally requires an element of consumer brand confusion.

There is no way USPTO will see a restaurant and a stock trading app as likely to cause consumer confusion, as they are in completely different industries with absolutely no overlap. Sharing the same name doesn’t matter much given that fact.

Observation: several posters in this very thread have expressed confusion.

Also, it's always bad form to give out legal advice on the internet.

> several posters in this very thread have expressed confusion

Consumer confusion within a specific industry. Like a food company using their name.

If this were a food delivery startup, there would be an issue. Since it's an stock trading app, very few trademark attorneys would see an issue with it.

And of course, consult your attorney, as mentioned in the original comment.

ignore their email and consult your lawyer

You're making the assumption the email is a legal threat of some sort rather than an attempt to resolve the issue at hand.

Likelihood of confusion is not an immensely high bar for nationally/internationally-known brands (or ones that wish to be nationally-known )in the age of the Internet. Your restaurant gets a string of negative BBB reviews that feature prominently on Google that were actually aimed at someone's product? That's actual harm you can point to. If Alinea were just a local restaurant instead of an internationally-known institution, it'd be one thing, but If I were the YC company I'd take the opportunity to rebrand.

Amazing to read your answer! When I lived in Chicago I Was lucky enough to eat there multiple times, and it felt a bit like something sacred was being trod on. Will never forget eating "birthday cake" directly off the table, scattered in a little cosmos. Thank you for everything you've done.

No, not organizationally related to the restaurant. https://www.thealineagroup.com/companies/alinea

It's also the name of a very popular french furniture chain

Also the biggest provider of educational aid for elementary school in Denmark

Yes, Alinea means a new way of doing something,for us, it's a new way of investing!

Why on earth would you name a fintech company after a world-famous restaurant? Bonkers...

To those who have not seen the Grant Achatz profile in the Netflix series Chef’s Table (S02E01), I highly recommend it. One of my favorite episodes in the whole series. Excellent cinematography and storytelling. Obvious not the only reason Alinea is world famous, but definitely gave it a ton of exposure.

Possibly both have the same source (Latin) not a direct reference ?

They are in... completely different industries?

Sort of. The Alinea folks also started Tock, which is a tech startup.

So you deliberately gave your startup the same name as one of the most famous companies in another industry?

I don't understand the downvotes you're getting or the negativity in the comments. I've never heard of Alinea - the restaurant before - and it's really strange that people are being anal about someone else using the name for a completely different industry - it won't be confusing to anyone.

Here's a simple test I always use when figuring out if a name is good and not confusing: Google it. If you search for "Alinea", what do you get?

Does that really work though? What about mega companies with very common word names? Segment, Zoom, Stripe, etc.

It would be a bad idea to name your next tech company "Stripe" (or your next restaurant, for that matter; ew.)

Ha! I guess my point was that when those companies started up, searching for those terms was bound to result in some businesses popping up, though I'm sure they made the call that "hey, they're not in the payments/analytics/whatever space, so no worries"

You might also take a look at your logo when you're thinking about your brand. It looks very similar to Aether Apparel: https://www.aetherapparel.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com