EBB Development Limited happened to file for a Pakistani trademark for concierge on the same day Expensify filed an application in the U.S. Hmm.
Business expense report company Expensify has named its artificial intelligence system Concierge. Unfortunately for the popular startup, one of Michael Gleissner’s firms has this trademark in its crosshairs.
If you haven’t been following this saga, a number of firms that list Michael Gleissner as director have filed very questionable trademark applications, dead-on-arrival UDRPs and lots of trademark objections in various jurisdictions.
The case over Concierge might shed some light on Gleissner’s strategy.
Expensify filed two intent-to-use trademark applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 12, 2016 for ‘Concierge’. On the exact same date, a Gleissner-run company called EBB Development Limited filed a trademark application in Pakistan for ‘Concierge’.
On August 9, 2016, EBB filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for ‘Concierge’ as a 44(d) application, claiming priority to the Pakistan filing.
Suspicious?
John Philpotts says
Very suspicious. If I was the US trademark office I would be looking for staff driving around in new cars
Steve says
Pretty obvious he is trying to rip people off. Any lawyer should be able to show all of the ill intent on his and his companies part???
Steve says
Nice life, waking up every morning and seeing who’s idea/trademark you can rip off.
Joseph Peterson says
Gleissner would make a great “Law & Order” villain.
Relatively few episodes involving trademark abuse and RDNH. The writers would have to bump him off – probably somewhere in Asia surrounded by starlets. Homicide at the hands of some disgruntled IP owner … who would then go on trial as a proxy for the underlying social problem. It would be fun to see Jack McCoy weighing the moral ambiguities of cybersquatting and RDNH.
Harry Lime says
Or maybe a proxy posing as Gleissner and surrounded by starlets.
Last news of the real Gleissner — holed up at his studio/facility, in Cebu Philippines, where he was a great friend of local politicians and had donated vehicles to the police force there.
Also had stirred up trouble, after he had complained of a stench from a dump site which had located near his Big Foot Studio
Gleissner may be eccentric, but I still can’t see why he would file all these UDRPs, form thousands of companies, and file hundreds of trademarks (I’m sure those legal fees must be tremendous), not to mention, go after IP owned by Google, Home Depot and other Fortune 50 companies —
Searching for Gleissner in Cebu to find out why — no thanks. I’d rather fly to Aleppo
Andrei Mincov says
That’s the danger on sitting too long on your brand and waiting for the market to validate that you have something valuable. None of this would have happened if Expensify filed their trademark application before launch (as Uber, Stripe, and Firefox did) or even just after launch (as Google, Facebook, Periscope, and AirBnB did). I mean, it’s a sad story, but it’s the story we hear over and over and over again. You wait too long, someone steals your brand. Even if you end up winning, the was will have cost you a ton of time, energy, money, and focus. If you are starting a brand, you have the responsibility to protect it early on!
Andrew Allemann says
They actually filed it in advance of using it. Read the story.