Someone Is Trying to Trademark Use of "Bitcoin" on Clothing
trademarks.justia.com
trademarks.justia.com
KAGLEW was created by Charles Lew and Alex Kagianaris, partners in the boutique law firm, Kagianaris Lew LLP. They are recognized as a highly motivated and committed, demonstrating extensive experience in restaurant development and management. They are currently involved in several restaurants, bars/lounges, and development projects in the Los Angeles area; all of which showcase their expertise with prominent success rates and notable recognition.
Today, in this tough economy, KAGLEW is proud to identify and present hospitality and restaurant ventures as commercial opportunities for themselves and their investors. KAGLEW structures deals for maximum returns and is an invaluable resource for creating and building wealth in commercial properties. Some exciting projects KAGLEW has recently developed are the organic vodka from Hawaii, Ocean Vodka, the highly publicized Crown Bar in West Hollywood and the popular Gasser LOUNGE in Redondo Beach. STOUT, the latest venture from KAGLEW, is bringing together two of the fastest growing commodities in the restaurant industry – gourmet burgers and craft beer. KAGLEW is positioning STOUT as a high volume high return asset and has plans to open multiple locations in Southern California and beyond.
I guess they are not doing as well as they hoped in restaurants and craft beers then.
If a lawyer owns a company that needs legal work, is it so odd that the lawyer does the work? Seems no more odd than an owner that's also a programmer writing software for his business.
He was involved with Crown Bar and Winston's, two "trendy" expensive LA bars that were popular many years ago. From his website (KAGLEW.COM), about trademarks- http://ale811.wix.com/restaurantgroupla#!Trademark-Considera.... "The name must not be descriptive" "Stay out of the dictionary. If your prospective mark can be found in a dictionary, it has meaning and will be a poor candidate for a trademark." That's cut and pasted from a document on http://patentax.com/ which also advocates bar owners patenting designs of chairs, shelves and dinnerware.
We challenged a patent last year by submitting evidence of prior art. Cost a few hundred $ and not too much time. I'm sure current BTC clothing owners would be incentivised to challenge this in a similar way if it's not too far through the process.
In terms of financial services it is trademarked to Mt Gox in various jurisdictions, as a result of a trademark spat some years ago.
[0] a fair number of people object to the prefix 'The' so I omitted it.
Edit: as to 'prior art' challenges, those aren't significant in first-to-file jurisdictions such as Europe.
That's not true. First, this is a trademark, not a patent, so first-to-file is irrelevant. Second, prior art is still significant in first-to-file jurisdictions, it just has to be published (i.e., it can't be secret).