Allston restaurant Sloane’s wins trademark lawsuit against Florida ice cream chain

An Allston restaurant did not commit trademark infringement against a Florida ice cream company with a similar name, a judge ruled this week.

Sloane’s, a restaurant specializing in comfort food that opened in 2023, was sued last year by Sloan’s, a chain with 10 U.S. locations and one international location.

Although the ice cream chain claimed in its suit that the Allston establishment copied its name, logo font, homemade ice cream and signature “funfetti” cakes, a Boston federal judge ruled that a reasonable consumer would have little chance of confusing the two.

“It is not plausible that an appreciable number of reasonably prudent novelty dessert purchasers exercising ordinary care would be confused between the parties,” U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Judge George O’Toole wrote in his opinion dismissing the case on Monday.

Sloan’s, founded in 1999, currently has seven brick-and-mortar locations in Florida, plus one each in California, Ohio and Nevada, according to its website, with an eighth Florida store and a Texas store listed as opening soon. It also offers nationwide shipping on pints of ice cream and “sundae kits.”

The chain also has one location in Kuwait, according to its website.

In its original complaint, the company claimed that Sloane’s in Boston had used a “near identical font” to the logo that it had trademarked. In addition, lawyers for the chain alleged that the owners of Sloane’s were selling the “exact goods and services” that the company was “internationally recognized” for, namely, funfetti cakes and homemade ice cream.

The Sloane’s dinner menu lists seven flavors of homemade ice cream and four other homemade desserts, including a funfetti layer cake, according to its website.

To illustrate their claims, the Florida company’s lawyers wrote that when they performed a Google search for “Sloan’s Boston Ice Cream,” the Allston Sloane’s restaurant appeared as one of the results.

In his opinion, O’Toole wrote that “internet search results [do] not plausibly suggest actual consumer confusion.” Though it would be theoretically possible for a customer to confuse the two, he wrote, Sloan’s had failed to demonstrate that this had actually happened or that enough customers had become confused to hurt the business.

A disclaimer on the bottom of the Sloane’s website, viewed Wednesday, states, “The website and business is not affiliated with Sloan’s, Inc. or Sloan’s Clematis, Inc.”

Sloane’s, located at 197 North Harvard St., was opened by Chef Sarah Wade in the space formerly occupied by the restaurant Our Fathers. Wade is also the owner of Stillwater in downtown Boston, which she opened a year after winning an episode of the cooking competition show “Chopped” on the Food Network.

Wade named the restaurant after her daughter, Sloane, according to the restaurant’s website.