BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

If we were to write to Specialized I'm pretty sure they would back down quickly. Companies are very sensitive to customers getting upset with them. If they suffer, say, a 10% loss of business that is a huge thing for them. And I'm confused by the whole issue in any case. I know there is a Roubaix Bicycle Shop in Greeley, CO -- I have a water bottle from there. Are they suing all the bicycle shops named Roubaix or just this one?

jonawebb wrote:And I’m confused by the whole issue in any case. I know there is a Roubaix Bicycle Shop in Greeley, CO — I have a water bottle from there. Are they suing all the bicycle shops named Roubaix or just this one?

They only own the trademark in Canada, so the CO shop is safe. However, Specialized has apparently gone after two other US based shops in the past. Epic Wheel Works and stumptown. As for writing Specialized, they are getting a lot of bad press. Their facebook and twitter are definitely taking a hit today.

The Big Red S doesn't exactly have the best reputation for this sort of bullshit in the first place. mike sinyard is pretty used to being nearly universally reviled. i doubt they are going to back down without a fight.

Suing a LBS over a stupid generic name... I'm sure that really inspires confidence amongst their dealer network

Interesting that Sinyard would try this in a country where half the population speaks French. I wonder how they, as well as the entire country of France, is taking this. I would think, not well. It would be great if the city of Roubaix would issue the shop explicit permission to use the name, then slap S with a cease and desist letter.

Pierce wrote:Suing a LBS over a stupid generic name… I’m sure that really inspires confidence amongst their dealer network

beating up on their dealers has sort of been a long time hobby for them.

cburch wrote:beating up on their dealers has sort of been a long time hobby for them.

It's even worse -- Mike Sinyard wants to be exclusively the only bike supplier for a dealer. I like their products but I hate their behavior.

The FUJI Roubaix 3.0 is looking somewhat tempting as a first road bike. If I do pull the trigger, I'll be sure to leave a note on the specialized web site as I had drooled over some more expensive steeds in their stable, and am not feeling so tempted at the moment.

(light hearted snark) I might not understand the OP's question: "bully or righteous capitalist". I mean, how do you tell the difference?

I just took a look at that shop's sign -- it says 'Est. 2012'. Which explains the mystery for me. Specialized was using "Roubaix" for their bikes since at least 2008. So this guy names his shop the same thing, probably for similar reasons (associating with the famous race) and they don't want him to do that. I can understand that. Now, I still think they should back down -- but I think it's not a terrible thing for a guy who started a shop last year to change the name, either. It happens.

This is making the rounds today, it's a good (open) letter to Sinyard. http://ridingagainstthegrain.com/2013/12/08/an-open-letter-to-mike-sinyard/ Specialized has a history of an overly aggressive legal department... if it was just this one case, I wouldn't be so up and at arms over it. Specialized shouldn't have any right to claim the word Roubaix as their own. Now, I can see if someone was trying to market a bike called the Roubaix that intentionally passes itself off as Specialized model, in which case the trade-mark protection should apply. Granted, I do think that Specialized is legally correct in their argument but being technically correct doesn't make it OK. The Trademark should have never been awarded in the first place, as it's too common a word in the cycling industry and it is also a geographic location. The whole thing stinks. My guess is that the lawyers over at Sworks just spend the day googling for any trade-marked word they own + "bicycle" and if anything turns up, the lawyers have work today. That seems to be their approach. This kind of thing reminds me of patent trolling. It's abuse of the purpose of having these patents and trademarks in the first place.

Social media has one useful aspect...bullying companies to change their anti-social ways. :) https://www.facebook.com/specializedbicycles It's been non-stop barrage of comments for the past 3 days, doesn't look like it's letting up either.

The band Chicago originally named itself the Chicago Transit Authority. This appeared not to be a problem when they were a tiny outfit. But when the band hit the big time, this did not go over well at the company that runs the trains and buses in the Windy City. The band shortened its name to Chicago, which appeared not to be a problem for either the city or the band. Does General Motors have some sort of agreement with Canada over the name Yukon over its SUV by that name?

There is no international authority on trademarks, if you want to lay claim to a name, you register it in whatever country you'd think it has value. Roubaix is licensed by Specialized from Fuji's parent company in the US (held since 1990), while in Canada, Specialized has "owned" it since 2007.

It's not really a matter of not-being-able-to-trademark-a-geograhpic-place as it is a matter of the obvious use of said place because it is popular, part of the lexicon, i.e. too general to be patented. GM should certainly have the leverage to sue another auto manufacturer releasing a model of the same name. It starts to get fishy if they sue, say, the maker of a thermos or a car-wash by the name.

You know, the more I think about this the more I think Specialized has a point. Roubaix Cafe is no threat to them, but suppose they didn't challenge the name and some rival bought the shop and started marketing "Roubaix Cafe Bicycles" with a design similar to Specialized Roubaix. That would be the time to sue, but by then the name might have been established and anyway their rival might have lots of resources to defend the name. So instead they threaten to sue the little guy, when he can't afford to defend, and he gives up. It's not a nice strategy, but it makes sense.

Read the first article again.

Trademark Bullies Even the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears to be annoyed at this sort of behavior. In its 2011 report to the Joint Judiciary Committee of Congress on the subject, the agency defines “trademark bullying” as “The extent to which small businesses may be harmed by litigation tactics, the purpose of which is to enforce trademark rights beyond a reasonable interpretation of the scope of the rights granted to the trademark owner.” Keep that word “reasonable” in mind. It pops up all over the legal profession (yeah, yeah, I know). It’s actually a pretty simple standard. Would a “reasonable” person make an error like the trademark holder is asserting would be the case? Honestly, a “reasonable” person probably doesn’t think of Specialized when someone utters the word “Roubaix.” In its report, the Patent and Trademark Office notes that many trademark owners “… mistakenly believe that to preserve the strength of their mark they must object to every third-party use of the same or similar mark, no matter whether such uses may be fair uses or otherwise non-infringing. They may lose sight of the fact that the effectiveness of enforcement is not measured by how frequently they enforce, but rather by the effect that taking or failing to take action has in the marketplace. ‘The real question is public perception of plaintiff’s mark, not a battle count of how often it has sued others.’”

If I had to bet - there's no way Sinyard will back off. Completely out of character. In terms of PR, the damage is done, backing off will not make it undone, and they'll be that much more exposed to criticism for every other instance of litigation they have ever previously pursued.

Specialized is very protective of its brand name for good reason. There was a nice article in bicycle magazine maybe a year ago with the founder and CEO (Sinyard). He claimed they were within a few hundred dollars of fling bankruptcy. He came out of retirement and fired most of the people that were mismanaging the company and Specialized made a 180 degree turnaround. I would speculate that if this were just a coffee shop called Roubaix Café that Specialized probably would not care or even have a claim. But the place in question is attached to a bicycle shop that is not an authorized Specialized dealer and the place is called Café Roubaix Bicycle Studio. Also the person that wrote this article seems to have an ax to grind with Specialized...

The "red kite prayer" site that drewbacca links to some way up very effectively explains away the notion that Specialized "has to" aggressively defend its trademarks through litigation. The purpose of trademark litigation is to prevent negative impact to company profits by confusing or infringing wording. If abusive litigation impacts profits in the court of public opinion, the litigation has defeated its own intent.

Turns out they don't even own the rights to the trademark... talk about insult to injury. Case closed, no help from Specialized Litigation Services. http://www.bicycleretailer.com/north-america/2013/12/09/asi-says-calgary-bike-shop-can-use-roubaix-name

Fuck specialized and good for ASI (parent company of Fuji). Proof that Specialized didn't have to be assholes, they chose to be. “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.”

Holy sh***t. Could it be, a corporation with...ethics? Salty, could you link to the source for that quote? If that's the case, I want to send this "ASI" a note of thanks. I also may by myself something Fuji for Christmas.

Fuji now has my personal recommendation to release a model named the "Deus ex machina". Should be kind of a high end, general purpose model, not in any way specialized. Except they'll need to get an agreement from the motorcycle/surf bunch. Complicated.

Hilarious. Specialized creates a PR disaster for themselves, then loses ownership of the trademark and ends up in a worse position than before.

@edmonds, it's in the bicycle retailer link I posted last night.

edmonds59 wrote:I also may by myself something Fuji for Christmas.

It looks like you are going to have a nice Christmas. :)

Besides Fuji, ASI owns the Breezer, Kestrel and SE Bikes brands.

Yeah, that group made me feel good too. Joe Breeze seems like so much more of a mensch than Sinyard, of that generation.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this probably is not resolved. How to put this delicately…the world of trademark/copyright/paten/website registration is a convoluted mess full of D-Bag trolls and attorneys! The most infamous are called "patent assertion holding companies" and there sole purpose is to economically exploit anything that can be trademarked or registered. These holding companies are very skilled at squatting on stuff they never ever plan on using or producing. Then if someone tries to use one of their registered names, or create a product they have a vague paten on, it starts the process of costly litigation. Typically a corporation involved in an infringement lawsuit with one of these holding companies will need to spend at least a million dollars to defend, so most just settle very quickly. What does this have to do with Specialized and a small café in Canada? Until there is legitimate patent and trademark law reforms companies need to mitigate the risk of being sued by said trolls. Currently the best defense against this type of litigation is for companies to retain the services of the same d-bag paten holding companies to aggressive defend its brands and trademarks...and they don't go away so easily

Some outstanding perspective here, the people who are likely going to take the brunt of the public fallout from Mike Sinyards epic cluster**** will be the shops, and they least deserve it: http://yourbikehatesyou.blogspot.com/2013/12/everybody-else-is-doing-it-so-ill-pile.html Solution?

Seems to me that's what happens when you choose to sell bikes and stuff for a sue-happy company. There's the possibility that people will get annoyed and stop buying their stuff. There are other brands they could have chosen to sell, right?

That had occurred to me - strictly in terms of the shop owners. That doesn't help the mechanics or sales people, who had nothing to do with the initial business decision. From what I can tell, none of the shops in Pgh has Sp. exclusive, so maybe it's all moot.

Yeah, they were just following orders...

I would say that at this point, if you are a Specialized dealer, you probably have sufficient time to align with a different company over the next few years before this inevitably happens again. I'm confident that under current leadership, this won't be the last of the series of Specialized law suits. re: what Greasefoot said, I imagine that ASI is a more thoughtful business than Specialized and wouldn't have gotten in the middle of this if they weren't confident that their trademark would be upheld in Canada. Sure, S-Law could challenge this and drag things out a bit longer (doubtful, since ASI could retaliate in other markets such as the US). I imagine this will be quietly resolved. S-Law seems to have been caught with their pants down and I presume this is the reason they have been quiet so far.

edmonds59 wrote: From what I can tell, none of the shops in Pgh has Sp. exclusive, so maybe it’s all moot.

I think it's about accessories more than the actual bikes... most shops are either Trek/Bontrager shops, Specialized shops, or some other entity. I've seen a good number of Blackburn shops and a couple of Raleigh/Avenir shops. Some focus more on the offerings from QBP (Salsa, Dimension). Most bike shops tend to offer at least two independent brands, but I know that some brands bully to get more floor space (I've heard that Specialized is one of these brands. I've heard that Kona does it too, which combine with poor EastCoast warehousing is why you don't see a lot of Kona dealers in the east). Oddly, Specialized and Cannondale seem to frequently share space in the same shops. Usually, the accessories would be primarily Specialized in such a shop.

This is spectacular. Nothing quite like the bastard offspring of corporate incest rearing it's head. The d-bag attorney for Specialized is going to have to find SOMEBODY to sue now, if only to save face.

The shop owner posted on FB that Mike Sinyard called and talked to him personally, and everything is cool. That's pretty upright of Mr Sinyard. My guess is that there are some attorneys over there at HQ who will not be sitting on hard chairs for a while.

That Specialized may not have the trademark rights it is trying to enforce is really funny. I've seen a handful of trademark cases where a small business or individual tries to enforce trademark rights he, she or the business no longer owns. The issues I've seen arose as a result of someone either failing to properly document ownership of the mark, or, more often, engaging in gamesmanship and chicanery regarding the mark's ownership to keep it out of the hands of creditors at some point in the past. Typically large, sophisticated companies with good IP counsel don't find themselves in this undignified predicament.

Mikhail wrote:

edmonds59 wrote:I also may by myself something Fuji for Christmas.

It looks like you are going to have a nice Christmas. :)

Besides Fuji, ASI owns the Breezer, Kestrel and SE Bikes brands.

and thick carries most of them.

edmonds59 wrote:The shop owner posted on FB that Mike Sinyard called and talked to him personally, and everything is cool. That’s pretty upright of Mr Sinyard. My guess is that there are some attorneys over there at HQ who will not be sitting on hard chairs for a while.

Don't be fooled by the PR stunt. http://ridingagainstthegrain.com/2013/12/12/specialized-threatens-another-small-business-epix-gear/

BSNYC reported that Specialized also withdrew the Epic/Epix threat. Here's the VeloNews article. BTW, Sinyard actually went to Cafe Robaix to apologize to the guy had a video taken of them shaking hands, etc. But none of this convinces me that Specialized's lawyers are in trouble with Specialized's management. Just that they got licked.

yeah... it's kind of a wait-and-see situation now? I hope that S-Law (pronounced "slaw") learned a lesson, but, I doubt it. Either way, the brand is seriously damaged to me, having learned of all the crazy litigation over the years. I thought Sinyard was a dick to begin with based on unrelated interviews and other actions by the company. While I think a personal visit to Cafe Roubaix was a great PR move and likely genuine (he certainly didn't have to), it doesn't really erase the drama of the last week for me. I stand down from being outspoken against S-Law, but it is unlikely I will buy any of their products short of an amazingly good price and perfect fit. My apologies to the Specialized dealers out there, I hear they already have to put up with enough shite.

I agree, bicycles are simple enough that one bicycle to another isn't THAT much different; it's more commoditized than most in the marketing in the industry would lead you to believe. There's plenty of consumer choice out there, and no need to patronize a bully.

Who ever had the idea to video record that meeting, that was a bad idea. Sinard was so visibly squeamish the whole time, it actually counteracted some of the positive sense of the whole thing. They should have just left it at the online statement that Roubaix had already posted. Now I agree, though, it seems unlikely the S-Law legal team has learned anything from the experience.

they didn't learn squat. this is SOP for them and has been for decades. that said, our local specialized dealers also carry a bunch of other awesome brands of bikes. so there is no need to avoid them, even if you want to avoid The Big Red "S"

It's not just bikes though, it's gear. Most Specialized dealers don't carry much alternative in the form of helmets, shoes, saddles, etc. It's the accessories that give a sort of monopolistic feel to any given shop. I wouldn't avoid them over this, regardless. A crux, a steel framed tricross, and possibly a saddle were all on my potential shopping list before this PR blunder. It wasn't the blunder itself that was most damaging and I think that is what Sinyard and co. fail to realize. The real damage is that a lot more people have become knowledgable of all the other lawsuits.