The protection of free speech and small business, especially in trademark and copyright law, is a Federal issue. Please contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives and make them aware of this issue.

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The death of common sense
Mark Lemley, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

Here is the text of our letter to Senator Allard (Colorado):

22 December 2004

The Honorable Wayne Allard
United States Senate
521 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Allard,

In 1997, my family and I created a national ski and snowboard safety program for kids called “Snow Monsters.” Our small company now has more than 100 resorts in the United States and Canada using our films, books, and other products to teach safety and environmental respect to children.

Our company is under siege by Monster Cable Products, Inc. (Brisbane, CA), a leading manufacturer of electronic cable accessories.

Monster Cable demands that our company give up rights to its name so that Monster Cable can trademark “Snow Monsters.” The Turner family, the creators of the Snow Monsters program, would then license the marks back from Monster Cable.

We have discovered that Monster Cable has been aggressive in suing trademark owners using any variation of the word MONSTER for virtually any purpose. They have gone after everyone from monstervintage.com, a family-owned business selling vintage clothing, to Razor and Tie Direct, for use of “Monster Madness” and “Monster Ballads” in connection with music albums.

Monster Cable’s strategy is to run up enormous legal expenses and drag out trademark infringement cases for many years if necessary, thereby forcing small companies to give in to their unreasonable demands or risk losing their trademarks.

This is a new and important issue that deserves federal legislative attention for several reasons:

1. Monster Cable (and other large corporations) are attempting the control of certain words in the English language under the guise of trademark protection. Monster Cable is on record that it intends to own every use of the word Monster if possible.
2. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent if large businesses can effectively control the use of common words by virtue of their legal war chest. Even worse, they can eliminate or extort small companies like ours to serve their goal.
3. Large corporations must be prevented from predatory practices and extortion against small companies like ours when there is no possible chance that we have ever infringed on their trademarks or business.
4. Monster Cable boasts that it doesn’t mind pursuing frivolous cases against small companies like ours for the sake of “sending a message.” There is no penalty for them except their lawyers’ fees. The same fees for a small company are a death penalty. This must issue must be addressed if we are truly a society of free enterprise.

Sincerely,

Jack Turner, President
Sirdar, LLC
(dba Snow Monsters)