"Brand, colors and livery copied from Alitalia". ITA Airways sues Aeroitalia for plagiarism
Were it not Italy, there would be laughter. How can - one would wonder - an airline that the [...]
ITA Airways
Alitalia
AeroItalia
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Were it not Italy, there would be laughter. How can - one would ask - an airline that the media around the world call 'defunct', i.e., 'defunct', accuse a living and breathing airline of copying its brand and even part of the livery?
But this is Italy, precisely. Where the Neapolitan smorfia has created the figure of the talking dead man.
And the dead man here is Alitalia. Or rather, it should be. Instead, it speaks. It does so through ITA Airways, the company that in 2021, when it took over, bought its brand (and everything related to it) for an amount of around 90 million euros. Public money, since the owner of the company was (and is) the Ministry of Finance. To do what with that brand, one wonders? It is not known, except to prevent (wisely, one would say) someone else from appropriating and using it.
But here, in spring 2022, a small group of entrepreneurs pops up, which boasts the presence among its ranks of the charismatic (if controversial) figure of billionaire German Eframovich (former CEO of the Colombian company Avianca for a fortnight). The little group (hear, hear) glimpses the possibility of doing business in Italian skies.
Led by principal investor (and chairman) Marc Bourgade and CEO Gaetano Intrieri, Aeroitalia starts out by keeping a low profile, inaugurating its first scheduled connections from Forlì in July last year. It uses Boeing 737-800s at maximum capacity, as does Ryanair, and the business model is low-cost.
Barely three months pass and the company announces the opening of a base in Bergamo Orio al Serio. The route network expands, Aeroitalia sets foot in the sanctum sanctorum of ITA, Linate and Fiumicino, and begins to get 'bulky'. Boeing 737-800s become 6, plus a -700. In Italy it flies to Milan Linate, Bergamo, Bologna, Pisa, Ancona, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Catania, Comiso, Olbia, Alghero. Abroad to Barcelona and Vienna (from Ancona) and to Bacau and Bucharest in Romania from several Italian cities.
ITA Airways doesn't mind, caught up in building its network from the ashes of Alitalia's, the growth of its fleet with beautiful and modern aircraft, and, most importantly, the negotiation with Lufthansa, which was closed last May although still awaiting the green light from European antitrust.
Then, on Oct. 19, the lightning struck: Aeroitalia (which has registered its name, brand, livery and every other aspect of its image with the European Union Office for Intellectual Property) plagiarized the Alitalia brand, is the accusation of ITA's top management to the low-cost company.
Plagiarized it would be, reads a letter sent by the Italian Patent Society to Aeroitalia, the name too closely resembling that of the former national airline, the stylized 'A' on the tails of the planes, and the use of the white-red-green colors, which would prominently recall those of Alitalia aircraft.
For this reason, through the Italian Patent Society, ITA requests the immediate surrender of the Italian and European Union registrations, the immediate cessation of the use of the marks in question, the change of corporate name by removing the term Aeroitalia from it as well as compensation for damages and legal fees.
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