GOURMANDS in Marbella could be forgiven if they thought they were seeing double.
Yes, there really are two restaurants with the identical name, La Petite Maison.
The favourite Côte d’Azur eaterie of Elton John, Bono and Madonna opened two new sister joints on the Costa del Sol around the same time.
One appeared in the grounds of the Golden Mile hotel Boho Club, while the other arrived at the sumptuous five-star rival Puente Romano.
The problem is… only one of them is legal.
After a two-year licence battle that ended in Madrid’s Audiencia Provincial Court, Nicole Rubi, the restaurant’s founder, has kept the rights to the name having proven the trademark is hers in Spain.
Her famous Nice restaurant opened in 1987 and it has long been a haunt of the rich and famous.
Thanks to a simple Provencal menu and oodles of charm, it became the go-to bistro for foodies in the know.
“It’s one of my favourite restaurants,” Daniel Shamoon, owner of the Puente Romano hotel, told the Olive Press this week. “So I was delighted when the Rubi family gave us the opportunity to open a sister joint in Marbella.
“We signed the deal in 2023, but had to postpone opening until the outcome of the court case.”
That has now been confirmed with a September 25 court judgement awarding the trademark back to the Rubi family in Spain.
In the ruling, seen by the Olive Press, the Boho Club’s trademark was described as being registered in ‘bad faith’.
The country’s highest court for intellectual property traced the agreement back to 2007 when the Rubi family handed the rights to UK-based restaurateur Arjun Waney.
His company Azur Limited was licensed to open any restaurants around the world until 2022.
However, it didn’t open any in Spain, yet just nine months before its expiry it applied for a new international registration and transferred it to a company in Dubai.
The Rubi family alleged this was an attempt to secure control of the brand after the licence ended and the Spanish Patent Office agreed.
It annulled the trademark, a decision which has now been held up by the Madrid court.
The Rubi family can now pursue their own agreement with Puente Romano, and the court ordered that their legal costs be paid by Azur’s Dubai holding.
“We are delighted with the result and we will be opening in the Spring,” Shamoon added.
A spokeswoman from the LPM the world-wide holding company for many of the La Petite Maison restaurants, claimed that the trademark proceedings have ‘not reached final conclusion yet’.
She added the hotel had ‘valid registered trademarks’.
“The decision has been appealed, and the trademarks are still active under our company,” she said. “The proceedings have not yet reached a final conclusion.”
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