First there was the trademark battle of the Coopers, Trelise and Tamsin; now it is the clothing label Illicit that reckons its brand name has been stolen.
The Kiwi clothing manufacturer says a soft drink company is using Illicit to illicitly sell its cola drink.
The name is above the door and on the t-shirts they sell, but Illicit Clothing had no idea there was also a drink by the same name until an email arrived three weeks ago.
"They actually sent me an email wondering if we wanted a free six-pack of Illicit cola," says Steve Hodge. "I basically just told them to send them to our lawyer."
Mr Hodge says he has spent 12 years building up the name, and he is sick of being ripped off. Three years ago pop star Pink used some of their images in one of her music videos, and now he believes the cola drink is jumping on the Illicit bandwagon.
"I get a phone call every two minutes from people going, 'What's up with this illicit drink?'"
But Illicit Cola cannot see a problem with the two companies sharing one name.
"They're a completely different market set," says Steve Shaw. "If there was an Illicit motormower range, we're not going to get upset."
Trademarks are product specific, so Illicit trademarked their name for everything they produce - clothing, accessories and make up, but unfortunately not for soft drinks. That trademark belongs to the owners of Illicit Cola, who were hoping they could do promotion work with their namesakes.
"We've actually tried to contact them on numerous occasions and said to them, 'Cool, we've got a cola product that's targeted at that same youth market, and you've got a t-shirt company, why don't we work together?'"
But that seems unlikely. Illicit Clothing says if it was not for the recession and the cost of lawyers, they would take the cola makers to court.
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