No Mo' Mo Pho

Coulgate Street Vietnamese café Mo Pho has fallen phoul of Big Pho. The Pho café chain seems to think they own the word Pho and have served Mo Pho notice that they think they are infringing their trademark. The Mo Pho team write:

It is with sadness that we would like to inform our customers that we will be reluctantly taking down our shop sign this week and trading as "mopho" instead of mo pho until we have establish a new name for ourselves. 

Please note, WE WILL BE OPEN for business as usual and welcome your continued support!!

Some background on our decision... we have been put on notice by Pho Holdings Ltd (Pho cafe) that they have registered and trade marked the word PHO, as they feel that the use of our name Mo Pho is confusingly similar to their trade mark, constituting an infringement and passing off. 

We feel this unfair as we ensured the look and feel of our brand was different to any established restaurants when designing our brand and logo. Our biggest surprise was that trademarking the word PHO was possible especially as it's our national dish which is used widely in our trade as a Vietnamese cafe/restaurant. 

As a small family business, taking on a successful chain such as Pho will be a big risk to us, therefore we opted to take down our signages until we are fully rebranded.

If you have any suggestions for our new name, please let us know!! You could see your name in lights and a free meal on us! 

It’s a little incongruous for a cutesy, Innocentesque brand like Pho to act so aggressively and a little odd that they think their customers might confuse them with a café whose title is a play on “motherfucker”. It’s not who they are underneath, but what they do that defines them.