The organizers of a Chicago-area pierogi festival are threatening to sue the organizers of another pierogi festival, this one in Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, for alleged trademark infringement.

According to news reports, the small town of Edwardsville, with a population of 4,700 residents (and notably within the most ancestrally Polish county in America), is in its fourth year of the Edwardsville Pierogi Festival, celebrating Poland's national dish. Seven hundred miles away in the Chicago suburbs, the organizers of the Pierogi Fest, which has been drawing crowds of 300,000 since 1995, claim the rival festival is "likely to cause consumer confusion." The "Pierogi Fest" has been a registered trademark since 2007.

The president of the Edwardsville Hometown Committee says the whole battle is “ridiculous,” and residents are “beside themselves.” To “protect” their local heritage, Edwardsville organizers filed a federal lawsuit of their own. “No person on planet Earth is going to confuse the Edwardsville Pierogi Festival with a suburban Chicago ‘Pierogi Fest,’” the group’s lawyer said in a statement.

“There is no way we could possibly be in competition with them,” one Polish restaurant owner in Edwardsville stated. The event makes a couple of thousand dollars per year. The proceeds pay for the town’s annual Easter-egg hunt, and buy the teddy bears that the Edwardsville Police Department gives out to kids.

—Source: grubstreet.com