Wine Brand ‘Valdo’ Attempts To Trademark Bully Wine Brand Owned By Nick Faldo

It's not often when three of your biggest interests all intersect at once, but here we are. Readers here will know that I am a regular when it comes to writing about trademark disputes, bullying, and news. You may also know that I have quite the affinity for wine. You probably don't know, however, that I am also a huge fan of professional golf, a trinity of intersts that I think might make me one of the nerdiest people on the planet. So, when I started hearing that a trademark dispute had arisen between Valdo, a winery in Italy, and Sir Nick Faldo, a one-time #1 professional golfer worldwide, all over the latter's wine brand, well, it all seemed right up my alley.

So, what's going on here? Well, nothing that should be going on, I can tell you that. Faldo's wines are sold under his name and have been for some time now. Recently, Faldo publicly announced that the company behind the Valdo brand of wines, a small winery in Italy, sent along concerns from its attorney that there was somehow going to be public confusion or a trademark issue at hand here.

The retired professional, who appeared at 11 Ryder Cups during his career, wrote on X, formerly known asTwitter: Recently, Valdo's trademark attorney has suggested that our logo on wine labels may cause confusion in the marketplace for their brand. While we respect their concerns, we have used the Faldo shield and font for many years.

We believe that our use of aldo' in our brand is a common grouping of letters in the Italian language and can be found worldwide in many variations. Also, who do you think has more notoriety - a wine brand from a small town inItalyor a six-time major champion who's been in the global spotlight for over 40 years?'

While Faldo's own notoriety certainly can bolster his claims that there is no public confusion here, this should actually be much more simple to defend. Faldo is selling wine under his own name and with branding overall that is not even remotely similar to that of Valdo's. The labeling is different. Color schemas are different. The whole look and feel of the branding is different.

Unless you are convinced that the aldo" in both names is going to cause confusion despite every other difference, there is simply nothing here. And if you are convinced that those letters are an issue, you should know that aldo" in Italian means noble or elder, a term with a deep, deep history and usage in wine-making. Noble or elder vines are often used to refer to well-maintained and cultivated grapevines, often producing the best wines on the market. It's an industry term, in other words, and one that is only tangentially at play in this case.

Faldo is clearly not backing down. And he shouldn't. I would be extremely surprised if this went any further than him having his own attorney send a response to Valdo.