A Seattle punk rock bar is suing the city’s new NHL hockey team for $3.5 million, saying the Kraken’s choice of a name and plans to open a restaurant are harming the Kraken Bar & Lounge, which opened a decade before the team’s upcoming inaugural season.
The Seattle Times reports the bar filed a lawsuit Thursday in King County Superior Court.
The Kraken Bar & Lounge was founded in 2011 by William Knupp and husband-and-wife Kat Colley and Daniel Colley.
The lawsuit asks that the team be prohibited from using “The Seattle Kraken” name and any others similarly confusing with its own trademarks. It states that the team’s announcement of the coming practice facility restaurant run “is sure to ruin The Kraken Bar and its near decade-old, cherished image and reputation as one of Seattle’s last dive bars.”
The suit says the punk bar’s trademarks are entitled to protections because they are distinctive of its goods and services and existed before the team’s July 2020 name announcement.
The NHL team did not respond to a request for comment from the newspaper.
