The Tiny Canadian Pizza Shop That Beat Domino's In Court

Over the years, we've seen several small business owners and small entities go head-to-head with big-name corporations. There was the time a small German city took McDonald's to court about packaging taxes and won, or the time some tried to sue Subway over the length of the "footlong," but the case fell apart before getting very far (among other times fast food chains were sued). Usually, we root for the underdog, and in the case of a tiny Canadian pizza shop that found itself on the wrong end of a lawsuit against a mega pizza chain, justice came fresh out of the oven.

Once upon a time, a corporate giant named Domino's — the restaurant chain that invented the pizza box — tried to sue a small, Newfoundland-based restaurant named Domino Pizza House on account of trademark infringement. The case quickly fell apart in court when the owners of Domino Pizza House proved that they opened the restaurant two whole years before Domino's ever filed for a trademark. The whole fiasco might have been avoided, but there was an unfortunate mix-up when the Yellow Pages ran an ad for the Canadian restaurant mistakenly using the Domino's logo, angering the pizza powerhouse. In the years since the lawsuit, Domino Pizza House has kept both its name and the loyal customer base that's been returning for over 60 years.

Domino Pizza House was originally opened by Claude Estoppey in 1963 under the name "Domino Tearoom," since Estoppey was a trained pastry chef from Switzerland. Before opening the restaurant, he worked at the mess hall of the American Air Force Base in Stephenville, where he quickly garnered a reputation for his cooking. Soon after opening the business, its name evolved to Domino Pizza House, and the restaurant became known for its beloved subs, donairs, and yes, pizza. As a Canadian-based single-entity restaurant, the Estoppeys didn't even know that the Domino's pizza chain existed until a random trip to Florida, especially since the first Domino's pizza chain didn't open in Canada until 1983.

Six decades later, Domino Pizza House has remained a staple of the Stephenville area. The locals love it with a passion that's unparalleled to the big-name pizza chain of a similar name, regularly encouraging others to try the famous savory pies. On one Reddit thread, one user claims that it serves the "best pizza on the island," while another considers it a local "institution." When residents are back in town visiting friends and family, they always stop at the brick building in the center of town that not only serves unforgettable pizza and subs but also notoriously took on one of the biggest pizza chains in the world and lived to tell the tale.