Lucasfilm has filed a lawsuit against a carwash situated in the suburbs of Santiago, the capital of Chile. The Hollywood movie company demands that the small business stop infringing on the Star Wars trademark, Reuters reports.
The owner of Star Wash, Matias Jara, says he got the original idea for his business after his daughter’s trip to Disneyland. What started as a simple play on words has later evolved into a full-blown homage to the Star Wars series. A sign in the iconic Star Wars logo font appeared above the entrance and the employees put on assorted franchise-inspired badges.
Later on, multiple workers at the site acquired full-size costumes of Star Wars characters to cosplay as Chewbacca, Dart Vader and the Imperial Marines while performing their work duties. Matias stresses that they only did it on rare occasions, though.
According to The Telegraph, Matias drew the attention of Lucasfilm when he attempted to register his Star Wash trademark. The movie company responded by pointing out how confusingly similar the names sounded and said it was concerned about customers mistaking the wash with a legitimate Star Wars establishment.
For his own part, Jara said there were enough differences between his small business and George Lucas’ franchise for anyone to tell them apart. He also emphasized that Lucasfilm held no trademarks in cleaning industry and therefore had no right to slap him with a cease-and-desist order.
It remains to be seen who wins in court.