There They Go Again

[peterw_diy]

It’s high time for S to get new lawyers. First, bullying. Now it’s revealed that S tried to register Roubaix as their own trademark in Canada after licensing it from Fuji/ASI? Who exactly is abusing IP here? Not the LBS owner…

How sweet would it be for ASI to revoke S’s license for “Roubaix”? Please, let there be a clause in the agreement that lets ASI do that without losing revenue…!

[mstone]

idiots

[jabberwocky]

@PeteD 71461 wrote:

Um… Oops?

http://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2013/12/09/asi-says-calgary-bike-shop-can-use-roubaix-name

Seems that Specialized didn’t actually own the trademark, but was licensing it from the company that makes Fuji / Kestrel.

–Pete

Quote ASI:

“We are in the process of notifying Specialized that they did not have the authority, as part of our license agreement, to stop Daniel Richter … from using the Roubaix name,” Cunnane said in an email to BRAIN. “While ASI does have the authority to object to Mr. Richter’s use of the name and while we at ASI understand the importance of protecting our bicycle model names, we believe that Mr. Richter did not intend for consumers to confuse his brick-and-mortar establishment or his wheel line with our Roubaix road bike. And we believe consumers are capable of distinguishing his bike shop and wheel line from our established bikes.”

See Specialized, thats the classy way to handle it.

[Drewdane]

peted;71461 wrote:

um… Oops?

http://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2013/12/09/asi-says-calgary-bike-shop-can-use-roubaix-name

seems that specialized didn’t actually own the trademark, but was licensing it from the company that makes fuji / kestrel.

–pete

Bwaaah-Ha-Ha-Ha-Haaa!

[DSalovesh]

(IT IS NOT exceedingly LAME. IT IS moderately LAME, but FOR. GOOD. REASONS.)

[Drewdane]

@DSalovesh 71484 wrote:

(IT IS NOT exceedingly LAME. IT IS moderately LAME, but FOR. PATRONIZING. REASONS.)

fify.

[Arlingtonrider]

I saw the following explanation and apology on Specialized’s Facebook page this morning. It’s good enough for me. Further, I think we should support our local bike shops and appreciate that they are trying to offer a variety of good bikes.

“I Screwed up, and I own it

I would like to apologize and let everyone know I realize I handled this situation wrong from the start and I’m very sorry for that. As many of you have probably already seen by now, I went up to Café Roubaix to meet with Dan in person to apologize and make good with him. Café Roubaix will continue on with its name. The video is up on Café Roubaix’s Facebook page. Dan is the real deal, after meeting him I realize this and am embarrassed by how ridiculous this is. What happened was wrong. There are no excuses but I do feel like I owe it to you all to explain how we found ourselves in this situation, the lessons we’ve learned from it and, most importantly, how it will change the way we do things moving forward.

Over the past few years we’ve seen a massive spike in counterfeit products, and most of the riders have no idea these products are fake, which is extremely dangerous because the risk of failure on these untested products is extremely high. In one instance, the entire head tube and fork sheared off a counterfeit Tarmac, causing the rider who had no idea he was not on a genuine Specialized product to faceplant and destroy his shoulder. To give you an idea of how much this issue has blown up, 10 Specialized employees hunt fake products across 30 major ecommerce platforms, we’ve identified over 5,000 listings, worth $11,000,000 USD in counterfeit goods since January 1st of this year alone. This is about double what it was last year. Due to this we have recently gone after IP and trademark issues more aggressively in the interest of protecting the safety of riders and the livelihood of our dealers and their hard-working employees. See the attached picture to understand how dangerous fake goods are.

In the deal with Café Roubaix, the wheels were the red flag that got the attention of our outside attorney’s who were already sort of on red alert for anything that pops up, although Café Roubaix wasn’t in the same camp as the counterfeiters, they still got caught in the crossfire. There is so much activity with infringers that it’s overwhelming and I don’t see them all. The first I heard of it was Saturday morning and by Monday the thing went huge. But still, that was my fault, which is why I’m so embarrassed. I should have called Dan immediately.

I heard you and you can rest assured I took it to heart. I realize now that we went too far with this aggressive approach and as a result and in some cases we hurt the local bikes shops and small businesses we wanted to protect. As a result we’re going to take a much closer look at all pending and future intellectual property and trademark issues, making sure to only pursue those that present a clear and obvious danger. The letter on Epix Gear was issued before the Café Roubaix story broke and has since been pulled.

I handled this very poorly and I own full responsibility. Dan at Café Roubaix and I have become friends and he’s happy with the solution. I hope you too accept my sincere apology. Like you all, I’m passionate about cycling and want to do everything possible to grow the activity we all love.

Sincerely,

-Mike Sinyard
Founder”

[jabberwocky]

Well, thats a decent result. Still, its given Specialized history with this sort of thing its hard not to see this as damage control from the “oh crap, we got a ton of negative publicity from this” rather than a heartfelt “we screwed up”. Hopefully they’ll be a little less sue-douchey going forward though.

[Drewdane]

Thay’re Baaack…

http://www.neilprydebikes.com/news/latest/allez-allez-nazare.html

[jrenaut]

I’m sure it won’t make a difference, but I’m renting a bike in CA in May for the Wine Country Century. The place I found to rent had a Specialized and a Lapierre in my size. Due to Specialized’s overzealous legal team and general corporate grouchiness, I went with the Lapierre.

[mstone]

yeah, there’s no particular reason to buy specialized instead of some other bike, and a lot of weaselly reasons not to.

[thucydides]

@mstone 81792 wrote:

yeah, there’s no particular reason to buy specialized instead of some other bike, and a lot of weaselly reasons not to.

I really like Specialized bikes. I’ve got three of them and was thinking about getting a Shiv this Fall. But not now. This is such a clear case where Specialized wins not on merits but on deep pockets. They and I both can do without my further contributions to those pockets.

[Tim Kelley]

@thucydides 81794 wrote:

I really like Specialized bikes. I’ve got three of them and was thinking about getting a Shiv this Fall. But not now. This is such a clear case where Specialized wins not on merits but on deep pockets. They and I both can do without my further contributions to those pockets.

http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2013/12/07/war-veteran-forced-to-change-bike-shops-name-after-threat-from-u-s-bike-giant-specialized/

[creadinger]

Unrelated to Specialized’s actions – I personally like the name Nazare more than Alize. It was a good move.

I also really like this company’s idea of naming bikes after local wind patterns. There are tons of them out there – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_local_winds.

I learned about Les Suetes recently when the giant Nor’easter crushed Nova Scotia a couple of weeks ago. Most of those listed though, I’ve never heard of.

Looking down through the list, you can tell that other companies and the military like the idea too – Passat, Marin, Chinook, Kona, Sirocco….

[thucydides]

@Tim Kelley 81795 wrote:

http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2013/12/07/war-veteran-forced-to-change-bike-shops-name-after-threat-from-u-s-bike-giant-specialized/

Yeah I knew about that one and had mixed feelings about it. I could at least kinda maybe see Specialized’s point on that, especially with the whole protect it or lose it aspect of US trademark law. But the Alize thing seems worse to me. Then again alize basically means “wind” in French. Allez means “go” but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that its etymology goes back to wind. After the Cafe Roubaix thing you’d think that Specialized would figure out that the brand damage from this sort of publicity is worse than the brand damage from whatever minor confusion people might have over an Allez versus an Alize. There are things they can do to protect the trademark that don’t require stomping on someone.

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