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Hair wars: two salons with the same name prepare to fight. Confusion arises as hair salon opens today in the Wal-Mart SuperCenter just down Montgomery Crossroad from a salon with same name. For more than 15 years, Dee Dee Maxwell worked on other people's snarls in her Hair Works salon on Montgomery Crossroad. But now she's in a snarl: A new, out-of-state Hair Works will open just down the street in the new Wal-Mart SuperCenter. It's prompted some confusion and a call to a lawyer. "I really don't think that I can go up against Wal-Mart, but I'm going to do what I can," Maxwell said. Today the much maligned and anticipated Wal-Mart opens on Montgomery Crossroad. Like other SuperCenters across the nation, it will house various services such as hair salons, banks or video stores. This store will lease space to Hair Works Family Salon, a California company with a name that to Maxwell is uncomfortably close to her own. So close that she says customers have called her confused when they saw an ad for stylists in the classifieds. Dee Dee Maxwell has owned and operated Hair Works since April 1989. So close that some mail and delivery folks were at first confused by the two similarly-named salons on the same road. The officials at the Hair Works in Wal-Mart aren't interested in talking about the situation. A woman who identified herself as Connie McLaughlin said she wasn't going to comment "on the woman down the road." This development raises questions about who has rights to the name and - rightly or wrongly - adds to the image of new Wal-Marts not being good for local, mom-and-pop type stores. "I've never really had a problem with Wal-Mart, but I don't think Wal-Mart cares what businesses they put out of business," Maxwell said. To be clear, Hair Works Family Salon is not a corporate part of Wal-Mart. The salon is merely leases space from the discount giant at the Montgomery Crossroad store. However, Wal-Mart isn't void of responsibility in any legal fight over the name, said Michael Landau, an intellectual property law professor at Georgia State University. He even suggests that Maxwell's Hair Works should sue both Wal-Mart and the California-based Hair Works. "The average customer has no idea that hair salon is not part of Wal-Mart," he said. The most important aspect in a dispute like this is the respective first dates of use of the names, Landau said. Government records seem to show that the scales would tip towards Maxwell's right to the name. City of Savannah records show Maxwell's salon applied for what is commonly known as a business licence March 1, 1989. Hair Works of California only applied locally in June. But Hair Works of California has received federal trademark consideration, giving it recognition in every state. That isn't good enough, Landau said. "You acquire rights in your local area through uses," he said. And Maxwell's salon has been operating in the area since 1989. Normally in these cases a settlement is reached. But big companies like Wal-Mart have deep pockets to fund attorneys to drag out the process, whereas smaller local shops do not. In the meantime, Maxwell has contacted an attorney, but she's going to wait to see what move she'll make. "If it gets into a lot of legal fees, then it's not worth it," she said. "I could turn the attention around and use it to my advantage. I'll call it the Original Hair Works.
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