Grocery Chain Trader Joe's Sues DeFi Platform Trader Joe With Same Name

The U.S. chain supermarket Trader Joe's is taking legal action in California, suing a cryptocurrency platform named "Trader Joe" and its co-founder Cheng Chieh Liu, accusing them of intentionally choosing a similar name to benefit commercially from the supermarket's brand and reputation.

Trader Joe is the decentralized exchange with the highest TVL on the Avalanche public chain, facilitating token swaps, liquidity mining, native token staking, and NFT marketplace transactions through automated market maker AMM. The company's website is: traderjoexyz.com.

Meanwhile, the California-based chain supermarket Trader Joe's, founded in 1958, operates 540 stores across various states in the United States.

Lawyers for Trader Joe's stated that the decentralized exchange created a narrative around the fictional character "Trader Joe," closely associated with the supermarket brand. The character dons a red hat, which aligns with the supermarket's primary color scheme of red.

According to a report by Blockworks, the co-founder Cheng Chieh Liu, a Chinese citizen residing in Singapore, registered the controversial domain traderjoexyz.com without seeking or obtaining permission from Trader Joe's to name their platform after Trader Joe.

The lawyers further stated:

They concealed their identities from the world and each other in their daily business dealings, showing that they did not want to be discovered and intended to conduct business by subverting legal processes and operating without legal consequences.

According to data from token terminal, Trader Joe was founded by an anonymous team and launched in 2021.

Trader Joe's supermarket chain has requested the court to issue an order compelling the cryptocurrency company to cease using its name in its operations and seek ownership of relevant domains along with any additional damages determined through legal proceedings.