I found out that sanyo has released a new brand of batteries whose name and design (in my opinion) closely resemble my own name and logo. I don’t know whether this is a coincidence or not, but at least I can show the facts:
This is my homepage:
This is the eneloop batteries´ press release:
http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertext4-eng/0511/1101-2e.html
And this is another logo of mine that I was already using in my projects:
Well, both of you are using a very stylized, 70s roller-rink sort of typeface, in lower-case. I’d say that is common enough.
The question is, is anyone looking for your brand likely to be confused when they find ad copy for batteries? Is your mark used to brand items or services that Sanyo may also brand with this new mark of theirs?
I don´t know. It depends on how well established my brand is against theirs (heh!). If you make a search for the Beatles and by mistake you get to an add for “Beatless” batteries (the Batteries which EAT LESS energy), you won´t be mislead, I guess, because you already know that there´s a group called the Beatles and it has nothing to do with batteries, but this may not be the case with enveloop and eneloop. Anyway, what surprised me was the similarity in both the design and the name, and that´s the point I was trying to make.
I think this is just a coincidence and the design really is quite different in my opinion.