Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

FotoInside has changed its name to FotoInsight to sidestep a global legal battle over use of the word ‘inside’ in its trade name.

Intel’s lawyers, Howrey Simon Arnold & White, wrote to the Cambridge company warning that the mark had been coined by Intel in 1991 and requesting that FotoInside change its name.

FotoInside was registered as a limited company in Eng-land and Wales in September 2003. It provides photo processing and gift items from digital photographs through the internet and delivered to the customer’s letterbox in 21 European countries.

Apart from traditional photo and poster printing the online service offers a range of photo calendars, mugs, puzzles, shirts, and other photo gifts.

A source close to the company told Business Weekly: “The company is still assessing the cost of having to change its name but felt it better to do so than being chased by Intel’s lawyers across 21 jurisdictions.”

FotoInsight has had to:-

• Apply for a name change with Companies House and with its bank

• Acquire new domain names in the different countries in which it trades

• Change its stationary

• Change names and logos on the different websites

• Change names and logos in software applications

• Communicate the name change to suppliers and customers

The source added: “Google alone finds 47500 entries for FotoInside – it is pretty impossible to change them all.”

FotoInsight managing dir-ector Klaas Brumann has managed to turn Intel’s aggression into something of a marketing tool for his Cambridge business.

He said: “Our photo processing company has never had any intention or wish to be associated to an American duopolist.

“It had never passed our mind that anybody seeing the FotoInside logo, advertising or website would associate it with the American chip maker.”

The online photo service is now expanding rapidly across Continental Europe, where the term ‘inside’ is not part of the local language. Brumann added: “It has been difficult to assess the potential legal implications of Intel’s claim across the 21 jurisdictions we are targeting.

“We found that, for example, French courts seem to grant a higher level of protection on the use of common English words than on French words. Therefore we preferred to change our name to FotoInsight Limited with immediate effect.”

While the European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market centralises the registration process for trademarks and designs it is local institutions in individual member countries that provide protection. The differences in law and interpretation can have major implications for any British business trying to establish its name in other EU member countries.

FotoInsight runs a custom made and easy to use online service to convert digital images into photo prints, posters, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, mugs, shirts and other photo products. The online photo service is backed up by the experience of Europe’s largest independent photo lab with an installed capacity of 18 million prints per day. Photos are developed at 24 strategically located, state of the art photo labs, employing 4,000 staff, with an output of over 3 billion prints per year.

• Intel has rigorously defended the ‘inside’ track. Its lawyers even warned off a small non-profit meditation group in San Francisco, called Yoga Inside. And they offered a small mapmaker, Town Graphics, £400 to abandon plans to register ‘map inside’ as a trademark after the company had used the brand in a mailshot campaign.

In previous years Intel has tried to establish trademarks for letters of the alphabet - ‘i’ - and for numbers e.g. 486.