Scooby Snax Fish and Chips Told By Warner Brothers To Stop Trading

Scooby Snax in Brightlingsea
Scooby Snax in Brightlingsea

Scooby Snax Fish and Chips on Church Road in Brightlingsea, Colchester, is the latest UK company to find itself threatened with legal action by an American film company if it does not change its name.  Hanna Barbera claim the rights to the name and have ordered them to cease trading immediately.

“Without doubt Brightlingsea’s best Chippy!” – TripAdvisor.

Scooby Snax, who have been using the name Scooby since forming and also have owned the domain scoobysfishandchips.co.uk since September 2009, are now facing the prospect of a very expensive rebranding project, or face Warner Brothers in court. Currently the homepage for Scooby Snax is offline, most likely due to a takedown request from Warner Brothers’ lawyers.

Scooby Snax has been open for many years and has been registered with companies house (company number NL16498371).

“I have had to spend £20,000 on changing everything that has the name Scooby on it. We can prove we had been trading before Warner registered the trademark in Europe but we can’t afford to fight this.” – John McNeill told the Daily Mirror yesterday.

According to Companies House, a previous company went by the name Scooby Snax Ltd. from August 2006 but was dissolved in November 2011.

One of Britain’s top chippies

Scooby Snax, Colchester after being declared one of Britain’s top chippies. Source: MSN Travel

In January 2011 Scooby Snax won a catering award, winning the top fish and chip for the London and South-east England region. The Observer’s food critic, Jay Rayner, presented the awards.

In January 2010 Scooby Snax were featured on MSN Travel’s guide to Britain’s top chippies. Simon Busch’s article on MSN reveals that Scooby Snax is run by John McNeil, a former chef in the RAF. In fact, 2010 was the second year that it one the award.

“Scooby Snax serves cod, haddock, hake, salmon, plaice, lemon sole, tuna, squid and pollack. Fish are griddled or fried and served with chips, a jacket potato or salad.”

Time To Rebrand

As much as John McNeil and his business partner, Andrea Smith, do not wish to rebrand, it seems to be the only option on the table for them. On a plus note, this is the 4th fish and chip shop that they have run, and their great track record so far should mean that their future enterprise is another success.

A cod by any other name would smell as sweet. We wish John McNeil and Andrea Smith the best of luck in the future and look forward to reporting on the opening of their new business.

Johnny Mac’s Plaice

John McNeil does own a couple of other fish and chip shops that use his own name as the brand. There is Johnny Mac’s Plaice in Clacton and Johnny Mac’s New Plaice in Jaywick.

John McNeil has moved quick and changed the name of the Brightlingsea takeaway already, and it is now called  Johnny Mac’s Plaice too.

Wowzers!

Scooby Snax on the web:

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