After a lengthy court battle, which is ongoing, in which the owners accused BW3 of breaching their licensing agreement and BW3 countered by accusing the owners of breaking the agreement too, the name has been dropped and and the Gridiron was born.
The background: The Bord family opened the BW3 in Akron back in 1991 after getting the license from the restaurant. Via the ABJ, the tit for tat on the recent legal issues:
A licensing agreement gave the family the right to operate new BW-3 restaurants in Summit County and the right of first refusal for any new locations in Medina, Stark, Portage and Mahoning counties.
David Bertsch, the Bord family’s attorney, said the family got an offer in 2013 to buy the restaurant, property and licensing rights for $1 million and reached out to Buffalo Wild Wings to see if it would be interested in the purchase.
Company officials were interested, but the talks fell through in the spring of 2014 when the Bord family asserted its right to be compensated for Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants opened in surrounding counties, a claim the company disputed.
The Bords filed a lawsuit in Summit County Common Pleas Court in June 2014, claiming Buffalo Wild Wings had breached the licensing agreement by opening new restaurants and not giving the family the right of first refusal.
Buffalo Wild Wings sued BW-3 Akron in U.S. District Court in May, seeking a termination of the licensing agreement because the restaurant had refused to invest more than $300,000 to update the “stadia” design being used in the corporation’s new and renovated locations. The suit claimed the restaurant was violating the federal Lantham Act that governs trademarks and unfair competition and sought treble damages — three times the amount of compensatory or actual damages — and attorney fees.
After about $100,000 in renovations made during a temporary closure, Gridiron reopened to the public in late June. Business has been slow so far.
“We want to encourage people to come in and give us a try,” Christine Bord-Ferris, whose late father, his two brothers and sister own the Akron restaurant, told the Akron paper. “Give us a chance.”
