I’m not going to chime in on the big Monster Cable debate — I’ll leave that to the real audiophiles to fight out — but it’s nice to see Monster suing a mini-golf park into submission for riding on their amazing brand recognition. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name Monster Mini Golf of Warwick, Rhode Island. HDMI cables, right?
Monster Mini Golf was founded by Christina Vitagliano and her husband four years ago. The indoor glow-in-the-dark golf concept has spawned 22 franchises across the country.
The couple said they will not be bullied by the cable products company and that they have no intention of changing the name.
“It’s a little out of hand right now. It just needs to stop. I would say pick on somebody your own size, but I don’t think they should be picking on anybody,” Vitagliano said.
According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and court records, Monster Cable has gone after several other notable monsters, including The Walt Disney Co. for its hit film “Monsters, Inc.,” Bally Gaming for its Monster slots, the Chicago Bears for their nickname “Monsters of the Midway” and even Fenway Park for using the “green monster” wall.
According to published reports, in most cases Monster Cable has been able to work out a settlement or nominal licensing agreement.
So if sales dry up due to improved wireless audio they can always sue-sue-sue their way into the sunset. Then again, Monster Mini Golf also calls itself the “Millennium Falcon of mini golf,” which could confuse those who need a starship that can do the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs and instead find themselves staring at a Skee-ball machine.
(via AOL)
In case anyone cares, there is a business in Gurney, Illinois, which is now known as Fun with Rocky’s or Rocky’s Funhouse. This company was formerly known as Monster Golf, and ironically was in business BEFORE Monster Mini Golf and has the same EXACT business concept. I have it on a very reliable source that Monster Mini Golf hijacked this business, called it its own, then took legal action which resulted in the original “Monster Golf” having to change its name. As they say, what comes around goes around and I hope these scam artists get everything they deserve in court. Go MONSTER CABLE!!
WOW! I have a friend who used to work at one of Monster mini golfs buildings in Massachusetts. Let’s just say that he doesn’t work there anymore because of some asinine franchisee who has gone through more employees than attendance at a red sox game. The things that were told to me and the things that I saw go on there were indescribable to put it mildly. I can only imagine the things that I didn’t see or were not told to me. Karma is a bitch and it looks like it is catching up to them.
Well, Fenway’s Green Monster has been around since 1917. The Red Sox should sue these Monster Cable losers.
I am aware of your concerns regarding the lawsuit that we filed against Monster Mini Golf, a Rhode Island-based company that franchises miniature golf establishments across the U.S. (currently 24 locations). Suffice to say we take this lawsuit very seriously and filed only as a necessary measure to protect our established trademark rights.
Regardless of what false representations have been circulated about Monster, we are not a faceless corporate giant out to squash legitimate business concerns and rising entrepreneurs. We are in fact, a family-owned company that relies heavily on our brand name and reputation in order to continue serving our customers. We have always tried to provide our customers with the highest performance products at an affordable price. While we are best known for our cable products, we also manufacture high performance accessories in business areas ranging in home theater, computing, gaming, portable entertainment and power management. To protect these business areas, we have sought and been awarded trademarks for each respective category. In addition to the areas above, in the past 30 years, we have also expanded the categories including sports and other lifestyle ventures. According to the trademark law, we must enforce our marks or we will lose them and they will become generic.
We were trying our best to avoid the lawsuit, and we are trying our best to settle the lawsuit.
We appreciate your viewpoints and hope you will review the attached documents to fully understand the facts before making judgments against myself or my company.
http://www.monstercable.com/monster_truth
Monsterously,
Noel Lee
nlee@monstercable.com
Noel Lee,
You can’t protect a portion of a brand that is already generic. The word “Monster” is already in the public domain.
Did you guys think about hiring a branding firm to come up with a name you can actually protect? See, this is why good money is spent on these sorts of things. So you don’t have to go around, after-the-fact, trying to protect against bad decisions.
Going through the motions of litigation (some would call vexatious) and making your opponants give up before trial doesn’t mean you succeeded in protecting your brand, you’ve merely succeeded in shutting people up, because had they gone to trial, you might not be so lucky.
“we are not a faceless corporate giant out to squash legitimate business concerns and rising entrepreneurs. ”
Tell that to the guy who registered “Mini Monsters” as a trademark for these:
http://www.carnivalsource.com/store/p/16605-MINI-MONSTERS-Gross-.html
Monster Cable is not as bad as everyone says it is. Monster Cable is much, much *worse* than anyone knows.
On Behalf of Noel Lee, Found of Monster Cable
Some perspective for you on your comments. Apple, EBay, Amazon, Virgin, Dial Soap, or Tide detergent have trade names. These companies vehemently enforce their marks as required by the Patent and Trademark office, or they will lose all rights to their marks, just as we would if we did not enforce them. That’s the trademark law.
We have been building our Monster marks beginning in 1978 when there were no Monster trademarks except for Cookie Monster. It took a long 30 years to get to the number of Monster trademarks that have been awarded to us. We have built up many Monster marks and have invested a lot of money in building the brand in motor sports, gaming, and other related businesses. We also have Monster Game, which far predates the Monster Mini Golf filing in the entertainment category.
Mini Golf has also filed for the “Monster” stand alone trademark that we already own in many classes. So it’s not mini golf vs. cable, it’s their trying to use the Monster mark while we already own it. We consider our Monster mark a “famous mark” and as such, can be diluted with other people using it, just as those companies mentioned above.
If they were a small family owned business, that would not bother us because the dilution is minimal. Monster Mini Golf is a franchise business that goes across 10 states, fully intentioned to go national.
Unlike us, where we have trademarks awarded to us by the patent and trademark office, they are licensing to their franchises a trademark that was never granted to them. They should at least wait until the trademark office examines their application, and looks at ours, and it is the trademark office that should decide. Visit our web site at http://www.monstercable.com/monster_truth for complete information about this issue.
By the way, we are also a family owned business. I would not consider us a huge company as we only have 500 employees. Look us up, and feel free to contact me by email. Please put in the subject line Reply to Noel so I can easily recognize it.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. It allow me the opportunity to express our viewpoint with you.
Monsterously,
Noel
The Head Monster
truth@monstercable.com
On Behalf of Noel Lee, Found of Monster Cable
Some perspective for you on your comments. Apple, EBay, Amazon, Virgin, Dial Soap, or Tide detergent have trade names. These companies vehemently enforce their marks as required by the Patent and Trademark office, or they will lose all rights to their marks, just as we would if we did not enforce them. That’s the trademark law.
We have been building our Monster marks beginning in 1978 when there were no Monster trademarks except for Cookie Monster. It took a long 30 years to get to the number of Monster trademarks that have been awarded to us. We have built up many Monster marks and have invested a lot of money in building the brand in motor sports, gaming, and other related businesses. We also have Monster Game, which far predates the Monster Mini Golf filing in the entertainment category.
Mini Golf has also filed for the “Monster” stand alone trademark that we already own in many classes. So it’s not mini golf vs. cable, it’s their trying to use the Monster mark while we already own it. We consider our Monster mark a “famous mark” and as such, can be diluted with other people using it, just as those companies mentioned above.
If they were a small family owned business, that would not bother us because the dilution is minimal. Monster Mini Golf is a franchise business that goes across 10 states, fully intentioned to go national.
Unlike us, where we have trademarks awarded to us by the patent and trademark office, they are licensing to their franchises a trademark that was never granted to them. They should at least wait until the trademark office examines their application, and looks at ours, and it is the trademark office that should decide. Visit our web site at http://www.monstercable.com/monster_truth for complete information about this issue.
By the way, we are also a family owned business. I would not consider us a huge company as we only have 500 employees. Look us up, and feel free to contact me by email. Please put in the subject line Reply to Noel so I can easily recognize it.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. It allow me the opportunity to express our viewpoint with you.
Monsterously,
Noel
The Head Monster
truth@monstercable.com
Public Proposal to Monster Mini Golf
The internet has changed how companies like us can defend our brand and prevent the dilution of our trademarks by those who choose to infringe on them. By appealing to consumers’ emotions using mis-information and distorted truths has created a different dynamic to patent and trademark protection. The sentiment of our customers wins over our rights to protect the brand. Monster Mini Golf is attempting to trademark “Monster”, Monster Mini Golf, and Monster Entertainment in areas that we already own, so we had no choice to file a lawsuit, or otherwise suffer dilution of our mark and potential loss of the mark itself.
It’s costly to sue anyone, no one wants to do it. We have made many attempts to avoid this lawsuit by offering a simple and low cost license agreement that would allow us to protect our trademarks that we already own, and allow Monster Mini Golf to use the name for their business. They refused each time.
Through their attempts to disparage us as a greedy corporate bully, we have been wrongly portrayed as a company focused on squashing small business, when the opposite is true. We are also a small business, and have survived for 30 years. This lawsuit admittedly has caused so much misguided ill will amongst our customers, that we have no choice but to give up on it, and along with it our rights to have a judge or jury decide this conflict.
So we are publicly declaring;
1) Monster has filed papers with the Federal Court to dismiss the lawsuit against Monster Mini Golf as of Friday, December 12, 2009. We will let the trademark office decide when they review their trademark application.
2) Monster will still owns the trademarks granted by the trademark office for which we offer a license for the use of them to Monster Mini Golf for a minimal royalty of $100 per month per franchise. Monster (us) will donate and match the royalty proceeds to the following charities that Monster has supported.
The Elf foundation; Creating Rooms of Magic:
http://www.elfsystems.org/partners.html
Seg4Vets: Segways for disabled veterans
http://www.draft.cc/draft3/Donations/Benefactors/tabid/113/Default.aspx
Monster Mini Golf will then have the ability to use and franchise the “monster” trademark and continue with their business, and we will have continued protection. This will save thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees and the court’s time. Everyone wins.
This lawsuit was never about the money, our requests were always minimal. It’s about the protection of our trademarks. It’s unfortunate for anyone who owns a trademark or patent, that the wrongful and disparaging remarks of a few can inhibit companies like ours from pursuing our right to legal process.
In this country, lawsuits are a method to resolve differences of opinion. The courts resolve disputes thousands of time each day. It is not always the bad guy suing the good guy. It’s asking the court to hear the both sides and make a decision. A judge or a jury determines ones right to trademark ownership. We believe that we would win this case, or we never would have filed it. This is far from a frivolous lawsuit, we have the prior trademarks to prove it.
For all of those who have supported us during this attack on our integrity, we thank you for your support. We apologize to everyone who may have been affected by our lawsuit with Monster Mini-Golf. We apologize to our loyal customers who may have been negatively impacted and to our retailers whose customers may have been affected by mis-information. We are sorry for all of the ill-will that has been generated on both sides.
For 30 years, we have prided ourselves on making the highest performance products in everything that we do. We have millions of happy customers. With economic conditions as they are, we need to focus on our core business. We will just keep producing the great high quality products for all to enjoy and hopefully Monster Mini Golf will get what they want one way or the other.
Thanks for lending your ear,
Noel Lee
The Head Monster
Founder and Owner of Monster
http://www.monstercable.com/monster_truth
I’ll be brief, but I just wanted to take a minute to update this post for the sake of complete information. We (Monster Mini Golf) have settled with Monster Cable, with a rather interesting conclusion.
It wasn’t until both parties started to recognize that nobody was winning except the lawyers, and agreed to speak one-on-one, without the lawyers present. After that, the conversation flowed rather freely, and both parties were able to get a better understanding of each other’s positions. While we agreed to disagree on each other’s core positions, without the filter of lawyers, it was much easier to reach a settlement speaking directly with Noel and Kevin Lee.
They have agreed to drop the lawsuit and refund all of our legal fees. Further, they have abandoned opposition of our trademark application, allowing us to register it. Beyond that, (and unlike the other companies that have managed to reach settlement before us) we do not have to issue any ridiculous public statements (like..”We are all best friends now”….etc.) and there is no gag-order, so we are free to speak openly and honestly about this case.
But the most important outcome of this case is this……Monster Cable has agreed to rethink their quest for a “Famous Mark”, and have decided from here on out, to relegate it’s trademark defenses strictly to businesses “confusingly similar” to Monster Cable (or other marks that they own) and NOT extend that to anyone who uses the word in any context.
So in other words, it stops here. It’s over. The world spoke up and demanded change, and Monster Cable stepped up and promised change and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
Thank you,
Patrick Vitagliano
Co-Founder of Monster Mini Golf
Patrick, it matters not that you got off, because unless the world demands a change every time Monster goes after someone with another ridiculous suit.
Monster has over 5 pages of lawsuits and all the spamming of websites with the rubbish that Noel puts out won’t change that.
http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?qs=monster%20cable%20products&qt=adv&page=1
So it’s great that you got off despite some Monster employees posting slanderous comments about your company, but it’s still a shame that Monster can bully just about anyone into getting themselves more money.
Call the comments on here about Monster Mini Golf slanderous, if that helps you sleep at night. The bottom line is, if you really do your homework, you will find that the realy bully in this story is Monster Mini Golf. All the proof you need is in Gurney, Illinois.