The Duchy of Cornwall, the private estate run by Prince William, has waded into a publishing row in support of a deli owner in Cornwall.
Kate Attlee sparked an industry-wide conversation by claiming trademark infringement over a cookbook published under the same name as her chain of delis, Sabzi.
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The word sabzi means “vegetable” or “herb” in Farsi and Urdu, languages that are spoken by more than a billion people around the world. Both Yasmin Khan, the author of the cookbook, and Attlee share Iranian ancestry.
The office of the Duchy of Cornwall wrote to Bloomsbury Publishing in support of Attlee, who is a tenant of the estate.
William inherited the Duchy of Cornwall from his father, King Charles, in September 2022. Although the day-to-day running of the estate is left to the Secretary and Keeper of the Records, the prince receives an annual income of about £20m from the private estate.
Bloomsbury maintained from the outset that the name Sabzi did not infringe upon any trademark, but the controversy has raised questions about cultural ownership and intellectual property. Under British law even such common foreign words can be copyrighted or trademarked.
The dispute turned sour online. Attlee’s supporters flooded the Amazon reviews of Khan’s book and sent Khan trolling messages. In return, Khan’s supporters flooded the comments of the Sabzi deli’s social media pages, accusing Attlee of weaponising cultural identity for commercial gain. Attlee has since relinquished the Sabzi trademark.
“I am pleased to confirm that this matter has now been amicably resolved,” said Attlee, whose husband is the great-nephew of the former prime minister Clement Attlee. “I am so looking forward to getting back to running the business I love and wish Yasmin Khan all the very best.”
“It’s totally surreal to me that the title of a family cookbook could face such a legal challenge,” said Khan, whose mother is Iranian. “It’s a reminder of how the entitlement born of colonialism still echoes through our institutions, and can even be internalised by those it once excluded.”
A spokesperson for Bloomsbury said: “It has been our position from the outset that use of the descriptive term Sabzi as the title of Ms Khan’s cookbook does not constitute trademark use and does not infringe any IP rights.”
They added: “We wish Kate Attlee continued success with her deli business.”
Photograph by Pål Hansen for The Observer