Daytona Chamber Wins Suit on Term Bike Week

A bunch of New Yawkers owning the rights to “Daytona Beach Bike Week?” Fugetaboutit!

When a New York-based holding company operating under the umbrella of Mettemp Inc. and Consolidated Distributors, Inc. started contacting Daytona Beach businesses threatening to take legal action for selling products printed with the words “Daytona Beach Bike Week,” the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce cried foul and stepped up to intervene on behalf of local businesses, hiring the law firm of Cobb Cole to represent them. You see, the Chamber had already been acting as managers of Daytona Beach Bike Week since 1988, and has established a Bike Week Festival Task Force made up of over 30 locals from public and private sectors who act as stewards of the event. On the flip side, Mettemp Inc.’s local affiliate out of Holly Hill, Joe Cool Inc., was claiming it had trademark rights because it had been producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the Daytona Beach Bike Week logo since 1987, and the fight was on.

This week, United States District Court Judge Mary Scriven resolved the conflict when she issued an order denying Mettemp Inc. exclusive ownership of the term “Daytona Beach Bike Week.” In the ruling, the Court stated “Daytona Beach Bike Week and its functional equivalents are generic and cannot receive trademark protection.” In a nut shell, the term belongs to the community and not any one person or entity. The Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce press release states “The Chamber and co-plaintiffs Good Sports Daytona, Inc., were awarded a final judgment cancelling the Defendants attempt to trademark the term “Daytona Beach Bike Week” finding that the Defendant’s registration of the term as a trademark was “fraudulently obtained or, alternatively, was improperly granted.”

In the press release, Daytona Regional Chamber Chairman of the Board Thomas J. Leek said, “In our minds this was always a fight to protect our business community, our city, and the greater community at large, and specifically to fight off the Defendant’s attempt to take something that wasn’t theirs… and then charge people for using it. This ruling ensures the mark will remain the property of the City of Daytona Beach and the community at large, for all local businesses and distributors to use in perpetuity. This is a significant milestone in that I will live as a warning to future trademark squatters, and provide protection for all to continue to enjoy the use of the mark.”

Conflicts over trademarks and motorcycle rallies came in to play at Sturgis as well this past year when a group called Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Inc. (SMRI) obtained a federal trademark for the word mark Sturgis as it pertained to rally goods and services. SMRI established official licensees who were charged a fee to use the mark and threatened to take action against vendors who weren’t in compliance. The dispute resulted in a lawsuit between SMRI and a local company out of Rapid City, Rushmore Photo & Gifts, which had been in business in the area since 1937 and claimed it had been selling Sturgis-related merchandise since 1987. One of the big differences, though, is that SMRI is a non-profit entity run by a board of local volunteers comprised of various community members, from a Sturgis Chamber of Commerce associate to business owners like Hot Leathers Jerry Berkowitz and Black Hills Harley owner Jim Burgess. SMRI also just donated $50,000 to the Sturgis Rally Charities Foundation from money generated from the licensing of the trademarks.

With the lawsuit out of the way, the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce can now focus on the next task at hand, organizing and promoting the 71st annual Daytona Beach Bike Week which will be held from March 9-18, a week later than its traditional date during the first week of March. The move was done in part to accommodate NASCAR’s decision to push the date of the 2012 Daytona 500 back one week. Daytona International Speedway requires two weeks to make the conversion from car to motorcycle racing, including building a Supercross track on the infield of the Speedway.