easyJet boss slams 'brand thief' and threatens to take dad to court

A dad is being threatened with legal action by billionaire easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou over the name of his driveway cleaning business.

Jozsef Spekker charges around £100 per job to pressure wash people's drives, patios, garden paths and conservatories. His business, EasyJetwash, has been in operation for three years.

But he is now in hot water with easyGroup, owned by budget airline boss Sir Stelios.

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The multinational venture capital conglomerate, which is worth billions, has written to Jozsef ordering him to rebrand his business or face a costly legal battle.

Jozsef, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, said: “They explained how my branding was very harmful for their business. They wanted me to take all the branding off Facebook and social media, and close it down. If I do what they want me to do I have to close the business. I’d have to start again. The first two years I spent a lot of money on advertisements.

“I have hundreds of videos on YouTube, a ten minute video takes a long time to edit. I have at least 160 videos. People like to watch them.

“It’s mainly the word easy which is the problem. I call myself EasyJetwash. If you go through most of my social posts I [capitalise the words] Easy and Jet, to keep it obvious that we are nothing to do with easyJet.

“They are hanging on to the word ‘easy’, saying that I am trying to confuse their customers into believing I am part of their group. I look very, very different. All the business I do, they don’t offer. I am totally scared. Who am I compared to a multi-billion pound corporation?

“Just a few weeks ago I paid off £800 on my credit card and I have no savings. I can’t fight them in the court.”

Jozsef applied to trademark his company name and was approved in April 2022. The Hungarian-born business owner, who suffers from degenerative arthritis, says the stress has left him feeling “worried I’ll lose everything”.

Jozsef says he is so worried about losing his business, he has set up a GoFundMe page to help him cover any legal bills. He said: “I can’t afford someone to represent me. I’m just a bloke."

Sir Stelios has hit back, accusing Jozsef of being a "brand thief." He said: "From my point of view I think Mr Spekker is one of the most calculating and profiteering brand thieves I have come across in the 30 years I have been doing this job.

"Not only he registered the domain easyjetwash.com which clearly contains the word easyJet but also he very cleverly performed search engine optimisation to come up very highly on google search engine results using the search term 'easyjet wash' .

"So now Spekker is running a very profitable business by obtaining more and more customers who fall for the deliberate confusion he creates online.We will win in court."

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