A bed-and-breakfast on the Isle of Portland is facing legal action from Airbnb over its use of the name bnb-side, for its six-bedroom hotel which was opened to help raise money for the area’s famous arts festival, ‘b-side’.
The name ’bnb-side’ is a play on the name of the arts festival in Portland, with the addition of ‘bn’ indicating the fact it is a bed-and-breakfast. Bnb-side has used its name since opening in 2024, and the owners recently applied for a UK trade mark to protect the name, though were met with an opposition, as well as, reportedly, several cease and desist letters from Airbnb.
Airbnb allege that bnb-side’s use of ‘bnb’ will lead to consumers being confused between the two businesses, that bnb-side may cause reputational damage to Airbnb and that bnb-side will profit from misrepresenting itself as being economically linked to Airbnb. Bnb-side argue that the phrase ‘bnb’ is very widely understood to be descriptive of a bed-and-breakfast and therefore accuse Airbnb of seeking to have a monopoly over the phrase. Allegedly, bnb-side have offered to differentiate by using an ampersand, or the word ‘and’ rather than ‘n’. However, this has reportedly not been acceptable to Airbnb.
Understandably, for a small bed-and-breakfast, a complete rebrand would be very expensive both in financial terms and in terms of the time and effort required to rebrand completely, as well as the risk of losing any accrued goodwill in its name to date.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of the opposition. For small businesses, this demonstrates the risk of using names which contain even a seemingly non-distinct element, but which have some crossover with names used by big companies, who have the resources to enforce their IP so aggressively.
If you have any questions on the above, or if you need any advice or support in respect of your own intellectual property, please do not hesitate to contact the team at McDaniels Law on 0191 281 4000 or legal@mcdanielslaw.com.
