Thu, 23 Oct 2008

Feds Target Mongols Gang Trademark

OK, but why would an outlaw motorcycle gang trademark their logo? These are the kinds of fellows who will kill you for farting in their general direction - were they seriously going to sic lawyers on folks who made "logoware"? I would've thought they'd just burn down the warehouse containing it!

I'd love to see a litigation history on this trademark - and I'd hate to be the lawyer who lost a case for the club defending it!

Reuters [has an] account of a Federal raid on a California-based motorcycle club, the Mongols, on charges "ranging from murder and robbery to extortion, money laundering, gun trafficking and drug dealing." The interesting twist is that the authorities are asking the courts to seize the IP of the biker club — specifically, their trademarked name "Mongols." "Federal agents and police in seven states arrested more than 60 members of the Mongols motorcycle gang on Tuesday in a sweep that also targeted for the first time an outlaw group's 'intellectual property,' prosecutors said. The arrests cap a three-year undercover investigation in which US agents posed as gang members and their girlfriends to infiltrate the group, even submitting to polygraph tests administered by the bikers... [T]he name 'Mongols,' which appears on the gang's arm patch insignia, was trademarked by the group. The indictment seeks a court order outlawing further use of the name, which would allow any police officer 'who sees a Mongol wearing this patch... to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back'...

(link) [Slashdot]

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