What’s in a Name? For MCA, a Big Lawsuit : Litigation: Universal CityWalk’s name is pronounced exactly like that of a restaurant. City Wok is fighting the entertainment giant over it.
Lawsuits go hand in hand with real estate development these days.
Just ask entertainment giant MCA, which first fought a battle over the right to develop Universal CityWalk and now faces another fight to retain the new project’s name.
The $100-million Universal CityWalk project is scheduled to open May 13 with a collection of restaurants, entertainment attractions, museum space, shopping and a satellite of UCLA Extension, all along a promenade built to look like an idealized Los Angeles street.
The project’s name may be in jeopardy, however. In December the owner of City Wok, a Chinese restaurant in North Hollywood, won a preliminary injunction in federal court against the use of the name CityWalk, which is phonetically the same as City Wok. MCA may, for now, refer to its project as Universal CityWalk, but that too is being contested.
In September, Hu-Yu Inc., which operates City Wok, filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles against MCA, alleging trademark infringement, unfair competition and trademark dilution. The suit asked for and received an injunction, and a federal court will determine later this year the fate of the name CityWalk, along with Hu-Yu’s demand for any money made by MCA from using the CityWalk name, treble damages, attorney’s fees, legal expenses and $10 million in punitive damages.
Last week the court issued a tentative ruling wherein U.S. District Judge William Rea said he was “inclined” to find MCA in civil contempt for having violated the preliminary injunction. The issue has yet to be settled, however.
When people hear the words city walk, “you don’t think of me, you think of MCA,” complained Stuart Davis, founder of City Wok. Davis opened his first restaurant in 1989 on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, just a mile and a half down the road from Universal Studios and Universal CityWalk. A second restaurant is scheduled to open this spring in Encino.
“My phone was ringing off the hook. People were looking for MCA and tying up my phone lines,” Davis said. “There was a tremendous amount of confusion with people thinking that I’m in some way affiliated with MCA. Our name has been severely diluted.
“I have no desire to litigate this,” Davis said. But “what if the place turns out to be a bust, or they have riots in Universal City?” The good name of City Wok, he said, could really get hurt.
Rea said late last year that the services offered by City Wok will compete with a portion of those offered at CityWalk and that the restaurant City Wok is likely to succeed on its unfair competition and trademark infringement claims with respect to CityWalk. The judge wasn’t too troubled, though, by the use of the name Universal CityWalk.
MCA would prefer to focus on opening the new attraction without the complications brought on by Hu-Yu’s lawsuit. For the time being, MCA is trying to always refer to CityWalk as Universal CityWalk. “We are, we have been and we always will be Universal CityWalk,” said Lawrence D. Spungin, president of MCA Development Co.
Spungin reported that all of the ground-floor retail space in the 180,000-square-foot Universal CityWalk is pre-leased. Still unrented, Spungin said, is second-floor space that’s most likely to be rented by nightclubs. All told, the project is more than 90% leased, he said. The promenade connects Universal’s theme park with its movie theaters, and executives at MCA hope to attract locals who want a taste of urban life with easy parking and lots of security.
The facades of Universal CityWalk’s buildings will be a combination of Spanish, art deco, modern and futuristic styles. Some buildings are painted to look like they’ve been occupied before, and there will be plenty of billboards and flashing neon lights.
The project was designed by the Jerde Partnership, which is also known for its eclectic designs locally at the Westside Pavilion and at Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego.
Critics of Universal’s CityWalk complain that what Los Angeles needs is not some idealized community atop a hill, but a real effort to revitalize our existing urban centers. Besides, what’s an urban experience without a little bit of grit?
Time will tell, of course, just how successful Universal CityWalk is. For now, though, the debate centers on what this entertainment complex will be called.
“We’re not telling them that they can’t open their doors,” said Joe Yanny, partner at Fischbach, Perlstein & Yanny in Century City and the attorney for Hu-Yu. Yanny and his clients are pretty insistent about demanding a name change, however.
City Wok registered its service mark in California in February, 1991, Yanny said, while MCA had yet to register either CityWalk or Universal CityWalk. A service mark covers a distinctive name or title used to identify a business. MCA now has applications for a service mark pending.
