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Marketing Week: Shell faces new threat to Smart card scheme
Picture Caption: Smart Card: Station mailing threat
21 May 1998
Don Marketing, the sales promotion agency embroiled in a legal wrangle with Shell UK, is threatening to send letters to Shell’s 1,700 service stations warning owners about the-legal implications of operating the Smart card scheme.
Managing director John Donovan intends to send a “letter before action” to a sample station – Tim Brinton Cars in Bury St Edmunds – then roll out the mailing to the entire network at a later date.
The proposed “letter before action” warns that Don Marketing has the legal right to seek damages against any company participating in the Shell Smart scheme without consent from John Donovan.
Shell’s solicitor DJ Freeman has written to Donovan’s solicitors Royds Treadwell warning that “the sending of such notices amounts to an inducement to breach their contractual commitments to our clients, and as such, are unlawful”.
But Donovan is adamant that the letter will be sent even though the full mailing to all service stations will cost thousands of pounds.
“It is our firm intention to send it and if stations continue to operate the Smart scheme we will issue further proceedings to stop them,” he says.
Don Marketing has issued two writs alleging Shell UK breached copyright on the concept idea used to create the Smart card loyalty programme and for alleged defamation of Donovan in a press statement (MW April 16 and 23).
Shell has been warned by its solicitors not to speak to the press following Donovan’s defamation action.
The company issued a statement saying: “The proper forum for resolving these matters is in court and proceedings are moving forward to enable them to be resolved there.”
Marketing Week May 21 1998
http://www.shellnews.net/PDFs/MarketingWeek21May1998.pdf
This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
