Tennent’s legal battle with festival over letter T

Tennent's feel they are trying to protect T in the Park trademark. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

The drinks heavyweights instructed lawyers to contact Bookaband Ltd after they felt Tfest - a tribute band festival to be staged in Strathclyde Park - infringed on Tennent’s trademarks and bore too much of a resemblance to T in the Park, which the brewers are “founding partners” of.

CONNECT WITH THE SCOTSMAN

• Subscribe to our daily newsletter (requires registration) and get the latest news, sport and business headlines delivered to your inbox every morning

• You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google +

Bookaband claim they don’t have the resources necessary to cover the cost of changing the name or altering their logo and website, and criticised the giants for what they perceive to be an overreaction.

Festival director John Ure said: “We contacted them months ago to show them our logo and didn’t get any objection at the time. But now our website is live we’re hit with lawyers’ letters.

“We feel we are being bullied. We don’t understand why a huge company like Tennent’s can feel we threaten them. Tennent’s don’t own the letter T.”

Tfest will see around 5000 fans entertained by tribute bands such as Coldplace, Antartic Monkeys and Oasish in Lanarkshire next July. Tennent’s fear is that people will see the T prefix in the name and assume it’s an event linked with T in the Park.

A spokesperson for Tennent’s said: “To call another event Tfest is confusing at best and misleading at worst.

“The T in the Park name, frequently shortened to T, took a great deal of time and effort to become established”

• Tennent’s owner to press for break-up of beer tie

• Police were in the dark about T in the Park move

SCOTSMAN TABLET AND IPHONE APPS

• Download your free 30-day trial for our iPad, Android and Kindle apps

• Keep up to date with all aspects of Scottish life with The Scotsman iPhone app, completely free to download and use