A GLASGOW businessman has outbid a superpub chain for a West End bar to keep them out of the area.

But Colin Beattie is facing a new battle with city nightclub tycoon Stefan King over the name of the venue.

Mr Beattie, who owns a string of bars in Glasgow, has bought the 500 Club at Partick Cross.

He's midway through turning it into a pub and seafood restaurant as a sister operation to Oran Mor, his venue at the other end of Byres Road.

The premises, at the busy Dumbarton Road junction, had been a target for JD Wetherspoon when it came on the market recently.

But Mr Beattie says he outbid the firm because a Wetherspoon bar could jeopardise traditional licensed premises nearby including two pubs he rents out, the Lismore and the Ben Nevis.

He said: "Do I need another pub? Probably not. But I don't like the notion of a Wetherspoon's - what I'd call a supermarket pub' - at the bottom of Byres Road."

However, after winning the bidding war, Mr Beattie has another fight on his hands with one of his Glasgow rivals, Stefan King.

Mr Beattie has called his new venue The Byre, an old-fashioned term for a cowshed. But Mr King's G1 Group registered the name as a trademark in February.

Mr Beattie said: "G1 doesn't have anywhere called The Byre, yet they've registered the name.

"After we put the signs up we got a letter from Murgitroyd, the trademark lawyers, saying Stefan King owned the name The Byre.

"But we found 16 businesses using the name Byre in Scotland, the most famous being The Byre theatre in St Andrews, which has been there for 30 to 40 years. So I'm not sure how Mr King can say it's his name."

Mr Beattie - who has registered several website addresses starting thebyre' - has changed his signs to poke fun at Mr King.

He said: "The legal test is whether our name can be mistaken for the trademark. So we've put up signs with Oran Mor Byre, Oor Wullie Byre and Broons Byre. We were even considering Stefan's Byre."

A G1 spokesman said the name had been registered for a planned bar and restaurant.

He said: "Mr Beattie is all too aware of the consequences of his actions and is using this controversy to drum up free advertising for his new pub.

"It's a pretty desperate measure. We thank Mr Beattie for his comments and will leave our trademark lawyers to deal with the matter as they see fit."

Licensed trade sources say the spat could be a forerunner to a bigger battle between Mr Beattie and Mr King - over G1's plans to build a nightclub in the Botanics, opposite Oran Mor, which dominates trade at the corner of Byres Road and Great Western Road.

G1 was involved in a trademark battle in 2003 when it put its foot down over its ownership of the name Bloody Mary's ... the owners of a bar in Vinicombe Street then renamed it Booly Mardy's.