Live! casino in South Philly pushed a Chadds Ford newsletter to change its similar logo

When a local newspaper went out of business in 2009, Emily Myers tried to keep the community informed by launching Chadds Ford Live, an online newsletter that covers barn fires and “tedious” government meetings.

As publisher, she said she designed the newsletter’s logo herself, in part by writing the word “Live” on her computer and scrolling through fonts until she found one that “looked alive.”

“It just looked like it was made for that word,” Myers said of the font she selected.

The owners of Philadelphia’s newest casino apparently came to a similar conclusion. The parent company of Live! Casino and Hotel Philadelphia holds a trademark for its “Live!” logo, typically written in large red letters and stylized in similar if not identical font, plus an exclamation point. In late January, a lawyer for the casino wrote her to demand that Chadds Ford Live stop using the mark, arguing it would likely confuse consumers.

The newsletter with just a half-dozen employees stared down the casino for a month before folding, changing its logo after deciding it can’t afford a legal fight. But law professors said this wouldn’t have been an easy case for Live! Casino and Hotel. Although the logos are strikingly similar, the businesses are in completely different industries, they noted.

“There’s a real hurdle to showing there’d be any sort of consumer confusion,” said Paul Gugliuzza, a Temple University law professor who researches patents, copyrights, and trademarks. “When you see the word ‘Live’ plastered on the side of a casino, you’re not thinking ‘Oh, that same company is behind this local newsletter’ and vice versa.”

A spokesperson for Live! Casino and Hotel declined comment.

The Live! facility’s owners started using the logo before Chadds Ford Live. The casino is owned by the Cordish Cos., a century-old, Baltimore-based real estate and entertainment firm with Live! properties in Maryland, Missouri, Texas, and elsewhere. In 2007, Live! Holdings LLC, which shares the same address as Cordish, applied for a trademark for the “Live!” logo, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Registering a trademark with the PTO is not strictly required to have a legally enforceable mark, legal experts said, so the casino could claim ownership of the logo even before applying for trademark.

For Myers, it didn’t take much work to design a logo like the one used by Cordish properties. Myers, 72, said she simply typed the word “Live” in Staccato 222 font to produce the stylized word, then tilted it at an angle. It’s unclear if Live! graphic designers used that font, but the typefaces have only slight differences.

The fact that a logo can be easily remade, however, wouldn’t be relevant in a trademark dispute, said Jennifer Rothman, a visiting law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Trademark law doesn’t turn on novelty, she said, but is about consumer recognition. A court would examine whether the marks use the same color, font, and punctuation in analyzing the likelihood of confusion.

There are noteworthy differences between the phrases. The newsletter’s logo was a deeper shade of red and includes the words “Chadds Ford” written in another font. It does not have an exclamation point like the casino’s mark.

The logos’ similarity alone would not decide the case, Rothman said, as the court would consider other factors, such as if the companies compete in the same market or if the word itself is common. Words like “Exxon” and “Kodak,” for example, are considered strong marks because they are distinctive, said Gugliuzza, of Temple. “Live” is not.

In a terse letter, Live! lawyer Tom Diehl warned the newsletter that if it did not stop using the logo by Feb. 6 — five days before the gambling hall’s grand opening — it could face legal consequences.

Chadds Ford Live can’t afford the time and money to win a court battle, Myers said. Instead, the small business redesigned its logo, updated its website, and replaced pens and credit card holders that carried the mark.

“We have a whole lot of references to Chadds Ford Live,” Myers said. “It’s no small job.”