Iconic Harlem pizza shop served $300,000 penalty in trademark battle with Midtown eatery with same name

That’s a lotta dough! 

A long-running battle between a pair of famed Italian eateries over the “Patsy’s” name has exploded once again, with a Harlem pizzeria with the name receiving a $300,000 penalty for repeatedly violating a two-decade old court order barring them from trademarking the disputed moniker.

Frank Brija, who owns uptown’s Patsy’s Pizzaria, was found in contempt of the court order for the third time since it was issued in 2001 — a move that will cost Brija $300,000, plus attorney’s fees, according to a decision released last week. 

The saucy drama has its roots in a 1999 lawsuit filed by Patsy’s Italian Restaurant on West 56th Street, a former Frank Sinatra favorite.

They initially sued the similarly-named Harlem pizza joint in 1999 for infringing on its trademark by using the Patsy’s name for jarred sauces that appeared eerily similar to their own.

In 2001, a judge issued a ruling barring the pizza shop from applying for any Patsy’s trademarks for packaged food products, a ruling that Brija violated three times since, records show.

The lawyer for Patsy’s Italian Restaurant told The Post that he hopes the hefty penalty will put an end to the drama over the “Patsy’s” trademark.

“Our client is pleased with the district court’s decision against a recidivist and further hopes that the lofty sanctions that the court imposed will finally, after well more than 20 years, result in complete and perpetual compliance with the Court’s 2001 injunction,” said attorney Joel G. MacMull and Brian M. Block of Mandelbaum Barrett PC.

But Brija’s son, Adem — who runs the original Patsy’s Pizzeria on First Avenue in Harlem — told The Post that “it doesn’t seem fair that we are not able to use the [trade]mark.”

Patsy’s Pizza was founded in 1933, Adem noted, while Patsy’s Italian Restaurant first opened in 1944.

“We understand that the judge found that what we did was wrong and we respect her decision,” the younger Brija said. “But these applications were just to sell frozen pizza, a product that they do not sell.”

“This has taken on a life of its own,” he said. “I get that it was a permanent injunction against my father, but he has been paying for it for 25 years.”

Federal judge Kimba M. Wood called Brija’s defense for his most recent violation — that the nearly 25-year-old rule was “ambiguous” — “incredible.”

One of his trademark transgressions was less than two years before the latest, according to the ruling in Manhattan Federal Court.

“A substantial sanction is warranted to make it more economical for… Frank Brija to comply with the Injunction than to continue to disobey it,” Wood said in her Aug. 15 decision.

While the judge passed on Patsy’s Italian Restaurant’s appeal for finding their pizzeria rival criminally liable, for now, she noted that “the overwhelming evidence of Frank Brija’s willfulness in violating the Injunction for a third time is likely sufficient to prove criminal contempt.”

Patsy’s Italian Restaurant was sued last year by its Albanian workers who claimed $1 million in wage theft and hateful comments, which workers claimed were rooted in the feud with the Albanian-owned Patsy’s Pizzeria.

Adem says that as they continue to expand the brand — currently with 17 locations — they’ll seek approval from the judge before registering any new trademarks.

“I won’t lie and say it doesn’t sting,” he said of the $300,000.

But to him, there’s no way you could confuse the two Patsy’s.

“I don’t like to speak about my own product or toot my own horn, but we are constantly considered at least one of the best pizzas in New York,” he bragged, adding they are one the few who sell slices from a coal oven.

“They’re in the theater district, so they have waiters with tuxedos on. I would never go there. I would only observe from afar.”