Putting on the Ritz
here is jam for the lawyers' tea at the 1 Ritz. They can thank the Al Fayed brothers, now taking over House of Fraser. The brothers already own the Ritz in Paris, and claim to have covered the purchase price from a year's revenue in licensing out the name. They would hope to follow up with House of Fraser's best name, Har- rods. Now, though, they are busily tangling with Revlon over the brand-name Charles of the Ritz. Their lawyers have crossed the Atlantic, to pursue the world's biggest biscuit company (Ritz crackers) and a major tobacco company (Ritz cigarettes). They have enjoined our own dear Ritz Hotel not to market its Ritz champagne in France — something which was not actual- ly at the top of its action list. But whose is the name? The immortal Cesar Ritz found- ed not one hotel but three — in Paris, London and Madrid. The English courts laid down in the 1920s that no ownership subsists in the bare word Ritz and its ritzy derivatives. London's Ritz maintains that it has the unfettered right to its name, is not beholden to its namesake in Paris, and will rebuff (has, I gather, already rebuffed) any attempt to make it pay royalties. Indeed, it is going in for some licensing on its own account. (I wish it well, in the hope that somebody else's biscuits (or cigarettes or scent) may help to subsidise my own refreshments.) But in my mind's ear I can already hear the cackle of lawyers' letters. The Ritz's parent company, Trafalgar House, also owns the liner Queen Elizabeth II, and last year opened (under licence, I assume) a new shipboard shop — Harrods.
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