By Steve Faguy
MONTREAL – The owner of a yet-to-launch Montreal television station is being threatened with legal action because the brand he's using for it is being considered as a new name for Radio-Canada.
This week, the CBC's intellectual property lawyer sent a legal letter to Sam Nowrouzzahrai, whose family owns 4517466 Canada Inc. and the licence for an ethnic over-the-air television station in Montreal that is set to launch this summer. The letter orders the company to cease and desist the use of the name "ICI" because it infringes on the CBC's trademark.
The ethnic TV station had planned to use the name "International Channel/Canal international", with "ICI" as an acronym. Nowrouzzahrai (who does business under the name Sam Norouzi) even registered "ICI" as a trademark with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office back in 2011.
The CBC's letter was sent this week and a statement of claim was filed with the federal court on Monday. Marc Pichette, a spokesperson for Radio-Canada, confirmed that the corporation asked the station to change its name saying the word ici "has been a Radio-Canada staple for decades." Network identifications use the phrase "Ici Radio-Canada" and a current advertising campaign uses the word to reflect its connection with its audience.
But a search of the Canadian Trade-marks Database shows a series of trademarks for use of the term "ici" were filed by the CBC last fall, a year after Nowrouzzahrai's ICI trademark. Montreal newspaper Le Devoir reported on Wednesday that the public broadcaster is considering rebranding all its French-language services and is playing with the term "ici". The trademarks registered by the CBC suggest the rebranding would apply to all Radio-Canada services, from local television stations to specialty channels RDI, ARTV and Explora, and websites like espace.mu and tou.tv.
Nowrouzzahrai, who is busy acquiring a transmitter and antenna for the multicultural station and dealing with dozens of independent producers who will make programming for it, only found out about the letter when this journalist called him about it. He's currently in Florida and said he doesn't know what to do about it. "We don't have money to hire lawyers," he said after confirming with his father back in Montreal that the law firm Gowlings had sent his company a letter on behalf of the CBC. Nowrouzzahrai said it was unlikely the small family operation would stand a chance against the CBC's legal power.
Nowrouzzahrai's ethnic TV station, which received CRTC approval in December, was part of a three-party deal that also saw Rogers Broadcasting purchase CJNT in Montreal from Channel Zero for $10.3 million and convert it from an ethnic station into an English-language Citytv station. In exchange, both Rogers and Channel Zero are providing support to Nowrouzzahrai's company to help it launch the new ethnic station, which would be run as a producers' cooperative.
Perhaps they’ll lend him some legal eagles, too…
