The previous operators of San Francisco’s Cliff House, Mary and Dan Hountalas, want at least a million dollars from the new operator, Sutro Lands End Partners—led by San Francisco attorney Alexander Leff—for the rights to use the name “Cliff House.”
That would seem to be the most obvious interpretation of the following passage from a new San Francisco Chronicle article that reports on some of the trademark claims being made by the Hountalases—and Leff’s response to those claims: