Specialized "Roubaix"tm

Ed Moss · Post by **Ed Moss** » 08 Dec 2013 14:46

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/special ... hange-name

Wonder how they can own a town's name? Seems a bit heavy handed and they are getting more worldwide negative publicity than it's worth.

Kev C · Post by **Kev C** » 08 Dec 2013 18:28

Ridiculous. What about all of the cycling clothing companies that sell Roubaix jerseys and tights?? Can they expect to be sued too?

Patch · Post by **Patch** » 09 Dec 2013 07:58

It will be interesting to see how spec respond to this. Incredible that they don't appear to have anyone keeping on top of this sort of thing, as nothing has come out of @iamspecialised all weekend. Cafe Roubaix will have done alright out of it all though. They probably have the best known bike shop in the world this morning.

Ed Moss · Post by **Ed Moss** » 09 Dec 2013 08:16

Guessing it's their IP Lawyers who sort out this sort of thing.

There was a similar case a few years ago where a lady called Mrs McDonald, who was stopped from using her family name by the evil McDonald corp.
She wanted to call her cafe McDonald's Cafe.
He should take it to court and do a Mclibel job...2+ years of lawyer fees!! http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/

I am all for protecting IP, but this one seems a bit too far, as a rider of a really nice SL2, I won't be buying another Specialized.

George · Post by **George** » 10 Dec 2013 19:53

As Ed said right at the start, I just can't understand how Specialized managed to protect 'Roubaix' in the first place, since it's not 'their' town, and it's been used for numerous cycling products for ages before Specialized came along.

laurence_cooley · Post by **laurence_cooley** » 10 Dec 2013 20:17

As if this wasn't absurd enough already, apparently it's the owner of Fuji that owns the trademark and licenses it to Specialized for use in the US.

Kev C · Post by **Kev C** » 15 Dec 2013 13:41

Looks like common sense has prevailed:

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/lat ... b4U6VOi.03