Guy spends nearly $50,000 on application fees to try to trademark terms such as Google.com, NCAA Final Four and Elvis.com.
I’ve written a couple times about Trademark King Inc, an Indiana business that filed a lot of trademark applications matching mostly famous names and common terms.
The company has filed 152 applications, according to a search on Trademark247. Most were filed around Thanksgiving, and many of them exactly match a celebrity name or famous brand (or its domain name). Many of the others are for common terms related to commerce. Only a handful have anything to do with Trademark King’s business.
The scale of the filings is really quite ridiculous. At $325 per application, it comes out to almost $50,000 in trademark application fees.
As best I can tell, Trademark King didn’t submit a specimen showing use in commerce for any of the applications. They all list goods and services of “Brand development and evaluation services in the field of trademarks, trade names, and domain names.; Creating trademarks for others”.
What is Trademark King up to? You can get a hint in this previous post. I called the owner of the company (which was formed October 30) to get further comment after seeing his flurry of filings, but he hasn’t called me back.
Here’s the list:
Brands: Dominos.Com, Kfc.Com, Progressive.Com, Steiner Sports, Directbuy.Com, Holybible.Com, Target.Com, Msn.Com, Microsoftstore.Com, Microsoft.Com, Disney.Com, Disneystore.Com, Apple.Com, Youtube.Com, Twitter.Com, Facebook.Com, Ebay.Com, Google.Com, Yahoo.Com
Sports: Selection Sunday, Post Game Show, March Madness Sale, Super Bowl Sale, Kauffman Stadium, Amalie Arena, Petco Park, Minute Maid Park, At&T Park, Verizon Center, Us Airways Center, Smoothie King Center, Sleep Train Arena, Quicken Loans Arena, Philips Arena, At&T Center, Firstenergy Stadium, Qualcomm Stadium, Mercedes-Benz Superdome, 2020 Ncaa Final Four Atlanta, 2019 Ncaa Final Four Minneapolis, 2018 Ncaa Final Four San Antonio, 2017 Ncaa Final Four Phoenix, 2016 Ncaa Final Four Houston, 2015 Ncaa Final Four Indianapolis, NCAA Final Four, NHL.Com, NBA.Com, NFL.Com
Car company domain names: Suzuki.Com, Porsche.Com, Toyota.Com, Maserati.Com, Lincoln.Com, Groupon.Com, Lexus.Com, Lamborghini.Com, Kia.Com, Jeep.Com, Isuzu.Com, Infiniti.Com, Hyundaiusa.Com, Honda.Com, Gmc.Com, Ford.Com, Fiat.Com, Ferrari.Com, Dodge.Com, Chrysler.Com, Cadillac.Com, Buick.Com, Bentleymotors.Com, Audi.Com, Bmw.Com, Astonmartin.Com, Acura.Com, Generalmotors.Com, Gm.Com
Celebrities: Warren Buffet, Pete Rose, Smokey Robinson, Eltonjohn.Com, Elton John, Muhammadali.Com, Elvispresley.Com, Eaglesband.Com, Golden Boy Promotions, Hank Williams, The Rolling Stones, Rollingstones.Com, Michaeljackson.Com, Thebeatles.Com, Ali.Com, Elvis.Com, Jamesdean.Com
Commerce terms: Cyber Deals, Cyber Sales, Presidents’ Day Sale, Veterans Day Sale, Columbus Day Sale, Labor Day Sale, Independence Day Sale, Memorial Day Sale, Halloween Sale, St. Patrick’s Day Sale, Fourth Of July Sale, New Year’S Day Sale, Pre-Thanksgiving Sale, Thanksgiving Sale, Valentine’S Day Sale, Free Oil Changes, Winter Sale, Fall Sale, Spring Sale, Summer Sale, Back To School, Clearance Sale, Invoice Sale, Sales Price, Yearly Sale, Monthly Sale, Wholesale Price, Weekly Sale, Factory Invoice, Final Four Sale, Holdback Price, Invoice Price, Factory Cost, Supplier Pricing, Employee Pricing, Back To School Sale, Mother’S Day Sale, Father’S Day Sale, Easter Sale, Pre-Christmas Sale, Christmas Sale, Black Friday Deals, Black Friday Event, Black Friday Sale, Top 10 List
Local businesses: Greater Northwest Indiana Association Of Realtors, Phillipschevy.Com, Phillips Chevrolet, Bbcexchange.Com, Baseball Card Exchange, Mccolly.Com, Mccolly Real Estate, The Loop 97.9, First Rate Construction
Personal/company related: Douglas Alan Lehocky (applicant), Trademarkqueen.Com, Trademark Queen, Trademarking.Com, Trademark King
Someone should introduce him to that yoyo guy at dot email
Now there’s a match made in heaven.
Breaking: “Crazy Man Does Crazy Stuff”, film at eleven.
I can’t believe he hasn’t showed up here to tell us what a genius he is, given the number of times you’ve baited him with these articles. That’s always my favorite part of these types of stories.
INTA should establish the “Leo Stoller Prize” for this kind of thing.
Reg Williams and Berryhill blah, blah, blah. Change the record you’re boring.
Hey, good to see you. When is that service of yours launching?
Working on it. Send me your email and I will send you private beta site link. Hopefully it may stop you slaughtering me when you see what we have done. : )
Thanks for the offer, but I’ll wait for the public launch. When do you think that might be?
Hopefully April. Coding doesn’t always do what you want it to do. 🙁 yoyo.email/holding (+ yoyo.email) ….are web holding pages we are working on. still a bit buggy. we should have bugs fixed by end of week. thxs
We got an order once to form the company “Microsoft Inc” in about 10 states. The guy was amazed Microsoft was only registered in 40 states. His big plan was to sell “the name” back to Microsoft. People are just un-informed on how the world works. We tried telling him he was an idiot and shouldn’t do that, but he thought we were just trying to steal his amazing idea. As his registered agent, we then got the cease and desist letters all of a week or so after he got registered.
It is amazing how much money people will put up to lose even more money. I must be selling my domains to cheap if people have this kind of money to waste.
Amazing that someone would try this and spend so much money on it…
Anyone who has actually dealth with the USPTO (like the owners of affected marks) are probably NOT just dismissing these trademark filings out of hand.
As I previously pointed out, a search at uspto.gov of “the name of an infamous (adjudicated) cybersquatter” shows about 33 trademark applications under his name and the USPTO didn’t seem to have any idea who this guy was until I pointed him (and his applicatioins) out to them as examples of how trademark procedures were being abused.
It is just possible that the applications referenced in this post MAY actually be “honest” (if heavy handed) ways of pointing out to some folks that they may have missed a quirck in the trademark laws, i.e., that some guy could actually get away with registering porche.com because porche didn’t think of it. IF TRUE then, the guy has pretty much safeguarded some of these brands with his applications as they would pre-date any subsequent similar attempts.
The only thing is that I was under the impression that registering an internet domain name style mark was done on the supplemental register.
My guess: he’s scamming his investors.
“Give me $100,000 and I’ll give you 152 great trademarks! (minus my 50% cut, of course)”
In doing some research I came across this document that has some interesting, and may be useful, material in it. It is surprisingly hard to prove bad faith sometimes, quickly at least .There are many different rules in many different Countries and can still allow system to be “played” by some people. Have a read at;
http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/badfaithfilings.pdf
Won’t the USPTO examiner(s) likely reject these applications as infringing on the rights of the owners of the famous marks underlying the derivative .com marks?
He forgot to file trademarkKing.com for himself. Which means he really believed in his company.
The Office Actions have started rolling in, all are refusals — for one, after a series of office actions, he has claimed in a letter to the Commissioner that he should be able to register ELTON JOHN because Elton was too “lazy” or “ignorant” to register the name himself. This is going to be the gift that keeps on giving for a while.