‘Star Wash’, a small, family-owned car wash on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, is being sued by LucasFilm, the company that owns the Star Wars brand, for allegedly plagiarizing its property.

Matias Jara, the owner of Star Wash, was in the process of registering his brand with the Chilean patent authority when he received a lawsuit from LucasFilm. The Disney-owned company reportedly wanted to stop the registration of the Star Wash name, arguing that the brand could be confused as being affiliated with Star Wars. However, Mr Jara is contesting the suit and claims that the name is different enough not to be confused with the LucasFilm property, adding that they are not selling movies of branded products. Apparently, the Star Wars copyright does not cover car cleaning services.

To be fair, Star Wash had been getting a lot of attention online by asking workers to clean vehicles while dressed up as iconic characters like Chewbacca and Darth Vader, and even the font used for the Star Wash logo is blatantly inspired by the iconic Star Wars logo, but LucasFilm reportedly didn’t bring up any of this in its lawsuit.

“Of course this lawsuit is affecting us. We’re a small business and we’re spending on things we hadn’t budgeted for,” Matias Jara told reporters, adding that he plans to contest the lawsuit and go on with his Star Wars-inspired marketing.

Jara told reporters that the Star Wars-themed car wash was inspired by a clever wordplay thought up by his daughter during a family trip to Disneyland. He liked the name ‘Star Wash’ so much that he just had to try the model, and it proved pretty successful.

This lawsuit is reminiscent of a very similar ‘David vs Goliath’ case we covered last year, when DC Comics, the owner of the Superman brand, sued Chilean family-owned bakery ‘Superpan’ for infringing on its copyright.