Big boys picking on the little fella

[Bats]

Specialized are a crap brand. I dunno why but they're the exclusive bike of people to whom the idea of riding as transport is totally alien - hence why they put them on the roof of their cars!

Plus everything they make is ugly. Even the Langster is ugly, how do you bugger up a fixed wheel?!

 

[Woz]

....nuff said.

 

[FMJ]

Special Ed told to sit the **** down by the REAL owners and licensee to Specialized of the Roubaix name.

http://bicycleretailer.com/north-americ ... qb3mSfoApa

"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.” - ASI (Fuji)

Nice outcome for Dan.

And Sinyard still sucks.

 

[john]

Epic PR fail. Seem to recall the big S have done this before a few years back, nothing like the same response with the facebook outrage.

Curious to see a few posting up their hate for Specialized. Reckon their stuff is OK and generally up there or a cut above a lot of the other mainstream stuff. Specialized are a big company lest we forget and it seems rather unlikely the engineers and other involved with design and manufacture will have anything to do with the legal department or this decision.

Either way it's a big f*ck up for Specialized. Interesting you can even trademark the name of a town, just put in an appilcation to trademark 'London'. Once this is in the bag woe betide anyone who tries to use it without some hefty licensing fees payable to retrobike.

 

[MagD]

John - go for it - maybe a retrobike kickstarter to help fund trademarking key cycling terms:

Berm
Dirt
Pedal
Wheel
Mountain Bike plus derivitives naturally MTB / ATB
Alp du'Heuz
Champ Elesys
Yellow Jersey
Polkadot Jersey etc


;-)

 

[john]

Not a bad idea. We can all be quids in trademarking common names. Once I get my 'London' application in the bag will start on those terms and more like

Ground
Sky
and of course
House.

 

[David B]

Not a bad idea. We can all be quids in trademarking common names. Once I get my 'London' application in the bag will start on those terms and more like

Ground
Sky
and of course
House.

I can't speak for Ground, but Rupert Murdoch might try and muscle in on the second one (whilst for no.3, Hugh Laurie could end up sticking his oar in)....

David

 

[john]

Good point on sky, looks like they aren't shy of defending it also > http://crave.cnet.co.uk/homecinema/micr ... -50011857/ . Don't seem to recall a facebook outcry for this one.

 

[velomaniac]

I seem to recall the original mtb of Spesh was a very similar to someone elses bike that was " borrowed" for a while then returned.
A crate of Spesh branded mtb's bearing an uncommon similarity to the borrowed bike showed up from Japan, obviously just pure coincidence.
To quote a song from C & C Music Factory - 'Things that make you go hmmmm'

Olympics also forced a Greek Cafe owner in London to stop calling his Cafe the 'Olympic', despite it predating the London olympics by many years, though obviously not the sporting event.
Harley Davidson tried to patent the sound their motobikes made but were laughed out the patent office when the best decription of the sound was similar to 'potato, potato'

 

[David B]

Olympics also forced a Greek Cafe owner in London to stop calling his Cafe the 'Olympic', despite it predating the London olympics by many years, though obviously not the sporting event.

Little Chef also had problems with their long-running Olympic Breakfast, but fared rather better in their legal scrap with LOCOG etc.

David