Inept! – Bottom 9 Neglects to Trademark Baseball Team’s Name, Then Loses It

Business 101
The contest for the name of the baseball team took place in July 2010. When the winner was selected, you might think that the planners, Bottom 9 and our Supervisor, would have fired off the application with the two-hundred-seventy-five-dollar fee and waited for verification about the TM before letting anyone near a keyboard to write the press release about the winner and the official name. Nope.

But then, this is the same crack business team that never bothered with anything that resembled a risk analysis at the beginning of this project, and have since consistently blown off the facts surrounding a league that fails 70% of the time.

The official entry must have widened the eyes of the first Bottom 9 exec who first went to the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) to register his prize-winning name. Under his new team’s name was this:
________________________________________

Word Mark ROCKLAND BOULDERS

Goods and Services IC 019. US 001 012 033 050. G & S: Cobbles and boulders. FIRST USE: 20101018. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20101018

Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK

Serial Number 85157483

Register PRINCIPAL
__________________________________________

Uh, oh. Now what? Start the contest over? Do a recall on the press release? Stop the celebration on the website and tell the winner sorry? But it was January 2011, and the contest was over back in September.

They did the only thing they could do at this point—register a service mark (SM) for the team’s name. Here’s their entry:
__________________________________________

Word Mark ROCKLAND BOULDERS

Goods and Services IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment services; namely, organizing and conducting competitions, matches and exhibitions of a professional minor league baseball team for live performances and transmission by others via radio and television. FIRST USE: 20100902. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20100902

Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK

Serial Number 85219987

Attorney of Record Car J. Spagnuolo

The key line in these entries is the one that identifies the date of the filing. Remember, the naming contest began in July. The press release announcing the official winner was dated Sept. 3, 2010. The date on the Bottom 9 filing should have been no later than Sept 1. Mr. Vistocco filed for the TM on Oct. 20, 2010, almost two months after the brand name had been officially announced. Bottom 9 did nothing over those months to protect its brand for what is a multi-million-dollar enterprise being built on the backs of the Ramapo taxpayers. Was there no one in this entire organization who had fifty cents worth of business sense?

But actually, it was even worse. Just in case a four-month window wasn’t enough of a liability created by this crew, there was a press release sent out near the end of August 2010. In the press release, Ken Lehner, a partner with, purportedly, an extensive marketing background, announced that the name of the team would be one of two possibilities:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rockland Baseball Down to Final Two Names
RAMAPO, New York (August 23, 2010) – During the past several weeks, thousands of baseball fans from across the Lower Hudson Valley and northern New Jersey have been debating among friends and family and voting for their favorite name for the new Rockland Baseball team, an independent minor league baseball team scheduled to start play in June 2011. After four weeks of voting, the fans have narrowed their favorites down to the Boulders and Palisaders. "The Rockland Boulders and Rockland Palisaders reflect the character of the Lower Hudson Valley." said Ken Lehner of Bottom 9 Baseball, LLC. "We will be thrilled with either name, but it’s up to the fans to decide the name they want for their team" he said.

The window of vulnerability was actually opened earlier than the September announcement. Anyone with about $500 to invest could capture the TM for both the Rockland Boulders and the Rockland Palisaders.

A parallel version of this kind of carelessness can be seen online. It’s called cybersquatting, and Nolo.com explains how it works: "Some entrepreneurial souls registered the names of well-known companies as domain names, with the intent of selling the names back to the companies when they finally woke up. Panasonic, Fry's Electronics, Hertz and Avon were among the 'victims' of cybersquatters. Opportunities for cybersquatters are rapidly diminishing, because most businesses now know that nailing down domain names is a high priority."

If the Ramapo Local Development Corp and the Bottom 9 people were building this enterprise with their own money, or some poor investors’ cash, this would all be just a passing comedy of errors. The fact that they are draining tens of millions of dollars from Ramapo tax rolls makes it a local tragedy.

(Read The Journal News story "It’s baseball team vs hot-dog vendor in battle for Rockland Boulders name.")

Michael Castelluccio
Preserve Ramapo
www.PreserveRamapo.org

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