Trademark lawyer tries to put squeeze on Deb’s Frozen Lemonade 

People in the Roanoke Valley love Deb’s Frozen Lemonade.

You can see it in children’s crayon drawings taped to the humble stand’s white cinder block walls. Or in the photos of weddings the tiny business has catered, or in the line out the door that forms on a hot summer afternoon. Or in the nearly 8,000 “likes” Deb’s has garnered on Facebook.

Since 1977 the mother-daughter operation has been cooling the Roanoke Valley with a tart and refreshing iced concoction. It’s a sweet and simple small business: shaved ice lemonade, hot dogs and snacks. Cash only.

But a sour May 31 letter from a Rhode Island lawyer has a left owners Joyce and Debra Castelli puckering with displeasure.

It suggests their single-store, three-truck operation has stolen the registered trademarks of Del’s Lemonade, an industry behemoth with dozens of stores spread across 13 states, mostly in New England.

“Your business, Deb’s Frozen Lemonade, has been using a trademark consisting of a lemon design either identical to marks belonging and registered to Del’s … or confusing similar to such marks,” lawyer Jeffrey Techentin wrote.

The letter demands Deb’s “cease and desist any further use of the infringing mark(s).” It concludes with a hint Del’s may sue.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of this tempest in a foam cup, here’s a bit about the history of each company.

Deb’s was founded by Rudolfo Castelli, a Korean War vet from Rhode Island who landed in Roanoke after his service. He was a postman who married Roanoke native Joyce Clark in 1953, and they had one daughter, Debra. For years, Rudolfo and Joyce saved their money to send Debra to college.

She graduated high school at 16, attended Ferrum College for one year and dropped out. So her dad took the rest of the tuition money and they set up a one-window lemonade stand in a tiny Vinton strip center on Walnut Avenue. It was for Debra, so they named it after her. The operation moved to a former Lendy’s hamburger stand on Brambleton Avenue in 1992. Rudolfo died in 1995.

Over its 36 years, Deb’s has employed legions of teenagers cutting their teeth on their first part-time jobs. Debra has no children. Her “kids” are the ones who grew up working for her, and she gets invited to their graduations, weddings and family gatherings. Some are now doctors and lawyers.

The tale of Del’s is far more romantic. You can find it on the company’s website. It dates to 1840 in Naples, Italy. A guy named DeLucia would gather snow in the winter, hide it in nearby caves and insulate it with straw until the summer. When the local lemons were ripe, he used to retrieve the still-frozen snow, make frozen lemonade and sell it at the local market.

His son Franco DeLucia brought the recipe to America about the turn of the century. And in 1948, Franco’s son Angelo DeLucia opened the first Del’s Lemonade in Cranston, R.I. Now they’re franchised in 13 states. It’s still a family operation.

Snow and local lemons, in a Mediterranean city in southern Italy. Fancy that, eh? The history of Deb’s seems more plausible, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, I called Jeffrey Techentin at his Providence office Monday and Wednesday and left messages, but he didn’t return the calls. I also called Del’s headquarters; they referred me to the lawyer.

In the letter, he included copies of Del’s registered trademarks.

Del’s uses a lemon, capped with melted snow, situated horizontally on its signs. Deb’s uses a different lemon, in a different shade of yellow, without snow. It has leaves at the end and it’s tilted on the signs. “FROZEN” is above the image. “LEMONADE” is below it.

The biggest similarity is the names Del’s and Deb’s, scrawled across the lemons in cursive green letters but in different fonts. But just like the words “led” and “bed,” they’re not the same.

In other words, the notion they’re “identical” is a crock. Are they confusingly similar to the point of a trademark violation? I’ll leave that up to you.

“It’s not the same lemonade,” Debra Castelli told me. “Ours is much better.”

How, after 36 years, did tiny Deb’s come to the attention of gigantic Del’s, which is based 650 miles away? The Castellis believe it’s thanks to the miracle of the Internet.

At their direction, employee Mandy Bloomer, now 20, fixed up a Facebook page for Deb’s Frozen Lemonade about three years ago. It includes a photo of the sign outside the stand. The lawyer’s letter specifically references that page.

It would be nice to think that New England lawyers have better things to do than spend hours at their desks cruising the Internet, looking for logos of itty bitty businesses to stomp on. But you never know. Maybe the legal business is real slow in New England these days.

In any event, Joyce Castelli, who is 83, says she’ll be taking a train to Rhode Island today, and she’ll be paying a personal visit to lawyer Jeffrey Techentin in Providence on Monday.

I wish him well because she strikes me as a tough old bird, not someone to mess with.

Stay tuned.

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