Curiousty Corner The boys were all set to launch the site as Vinomojo — great name, right? Get your vino mojo working — the website, the social pages, they’d run a six-week teaser campaign, which had stirred up plenty of interest, with thousands of people signed up and eagerly awaiting the launch of Vinomojo on the Monday…And then on Friday afternoon, three days out from launch, they got a letter from a trademark attorney, ordering them to cease and desist from launching under the name, claiming it was in conflict with their client’s wine brand. Awesome. No worries, we’ll be able to sort this out, they thought. But in a phone call with the CEO of the public company that owned that trademark, they were not-so-subtly warned that their cheque book was likely bigger than the boys’, and that they would not hold back in protecting their IP. So the Mofo boys went into a bit of a crisis meeting. Though advised that they would likely win the case if they fought it, they didn’t have the money to take it to court, nor the time, so they decided that we had better change the name. Figured something that sounded and looked like Vinomojo would be good, since they’d already invested effort and marketing in the brand. So they’re throwing names around… Vinodojo, Vinomogo… it’s late, they’re tired (probably drinking a few vinos), and Justin comes out with: “Why don’t we call it VinoMOFO, for the motherf*ckers who are trying to steal our mojo?” They all had a laugh: “Yeah, yeah, that’s funny, we wish, we totally should do that…” and then all sort of looked at each other, and it was like… “We can’t, can we? Can we? No…” So, there you go. Vinomofo.
