A California company named "Bagdasarian Productions" in paternship with their attorney, "IPAssure" in Conneticut, has succesfully trademarked the letter "A" and is efectively enforcing their trademark by sending threatening letters to honest American companies which are currently using the letter "A" on their products. According to Bagdasarian Productions and their attorney Stacy L. Papachristos, the letter "A" can no longer be used on any article of clothing for men women and children (t-shirts, hats, etc). It is important to underline that "Bagdasarian" did not register a logo but instead registered any instance of the first letter of the alphabet regardless of font, color, size, etc, simply put, the letter "A" in general now belongs to them. I imagine there must be some attorney out there who would want to challenge this trademark and to do so before the rest of the English alphabet is trademarked by everyone, apparently not such a hard thing to do. This is also proof that the United States Patent and Trademark Office is willing to allow just about any trademark regardless of how ridiculous it might be.
Furthermore, I have a copy of an e-mail written by Bagdasarian which implies an attempt to control the use of the letter "S" and "T" of the alphabet as well, as you can see below:
"To Whom It May Concern:
On April 4, I sent the email below. However, to date, you have not removed all of the A, S, and T Design shirts from your online store. Please note that my client has used these designs on clothing since 1962. You can confirm this by checking the US Trademark Office records at www.uspto. Gov... Specifically, any clothing with the letter A Design must be removed as my client owns the exclusive rights to the use of this type of letter A Design, regardless of color, which you are offering for sale.in addition, any clothing with a letter T design on green colored clothing must be removed, and any letter S design on blue clothing must be removed, as you are also trading off the good will of my clients Theodore and Simon characters. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
If you do not comply with my clients demands by April 11, my client will be forced to take further legal action against you and/or your Internet Service Provider, for failing to remove the infringing items. The demands made herein are not made to the exclusion of other remedies to which my client is entitled and my client specifically reserves the right to seek all remedies available to it under law as a result of your infringing conduct.
Sincerely,
Stacy L. Papachristos
IPAssure SM
Brand Protection Services
Stacy L. Papachristos, Esq.
President & Senior Counsel
485 Amity Road
Woodbridge, CT 06525
Telephone: 203-389-5555
Mobile: 203-231-9594
E-mail: [email protected]"
Everyone is free to visit the website for the The United States Patent and Trademark Office here: http://www.uspto. Gov / and do an advance search for the name "Bagdasarian" where you will find three live trademarks for the letter "A", they are very recent, read them if you like and judge for yourself. If you think this is an injustice feel free to blog about it, if you are a legal expert then feel free to challenge their trademark before we loose control of the entire alphabet.
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