Photographs filed in the other cases, however, show stations still displaying the name "Texaco" and the company's "Star T" logo. Such features are absent in photographs [image-nocss] of the Eugene station Chevron included in its electronically filed suit against the Higgins. A shot of the station from the south, in fact, shows an empty round hole where the Texaco Star once shone from the side of a canopy. There is a round logo on the station's gas pumps, but inside the reddish circle are block letters spelling HP, the report said.
Company president Steve Higgins and his brothers Tim and Kelly were "stunned and distressed" to learn about the lawsuit, the told the Register-Guard.
The suit accuses Higgins' Petroleum of using "confusingly similar imitations" of Texaco trademarks and station designs now owned by Chevron after its 2001 merger with Texaco. It seeks a court injunction barring that alleged practice, an accounting of Higgins' Petroleum's profits and unspecified actual and punitive damages and legal costs.
"We haven't heard anything from them," Steve Higgins told the paper. He said the station ceased being a Texaco station due to a series of oil company mergers and purchases at the national corporate level. They last operated under what had been their longtime brand in 2006, when Shell Oil Co. owned rights to the Texaco brand.
"Our supplier [under Shell] was the Jerry Brown Co. They told us that we were no longer Texaco and what we had to do to debrand. We did what we thought we had to do, and we hadn't heard anything about it," he added.
Higgins said the brothers followed instructions in a letter they received from Shell, telling them to change the Texaco red-to-black "gradation" on the station's canopy. They also replaced Texaco star logos with their circular "HP" signifying the name of the newly independent station. They even repainted, Kelly Higgins said, covering the old Texaco red with a shade named "Brentwood Orange."
The suit accuses Higgins' Petroleum of "an intentional, willful and malicious intent to trade on the goodwill associated with Chevron's federally registered Texaco marks." It says Chevron's Texaco trademark rights include a red-and-black gasoline pump design and a red-and-black gas station canopy design with gray poles.
"How do you own a color?" Steve Higgins asked. "Texaco can't own red!"
He added, "Even if you win a case, lawyers are expensive. You can spend a lot of money to prove that you didn't do anything wrong."
Portland intellectual property attorney Kenneth Davis, who filed the suit on behalf of the major oil company, could not immediately explain why the station was targeted. He told the paper that he could not recall details of the Higgins suit. Court records show he has filed similar lawsuits on behalf of Chevron against six other former Texaco stations in Oregon since 2007. Davis did not respond after receiving color photos of the Higgins' station from the Register-Guard.
Steve Higgins said the brothers were initially sorry to learn they could no longer operate as a Texaco station. But, after decades operating under ARCO, Texaco and Shell, their new "debranded" status came with some freedom, such as a chance to add biodiesel pumps two years ago, Steve Higgins said. "Being unbranded is actually better," he said. "We don't have oil companies coming in and telling us what to sell. Our sales actually went up 10% to 15%."
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