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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Website owner nIdea Corporation vows to continue its petition to cancel the trademark August 9, 2004, Arlington, Virginia, The United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, issued its decision today to deny the Long Island Wine Council's Motion for Summary Judgment in the case where website owner NIDEA Corporation has filed a Petition to Cancel the Long Island Wine Country Trademark. The T.T.A.B's decision read; "Upon careful consideration of the arguments and evidence presented by the parties, and drawing all inferences in favor of the petitioner, we find that respondent has not met its burden to demonstrate the absence of a genuine issue of material fact for trial. We find that there are genuine issues of fact, at a minimum, with respect to the issue of priority under section 2(d) claim, the issue of acquired distinctiveness under the Section 2 (e) (1) claims, the issue of genericness, and the issue of fraud. Accordingly, respondent's motion for summary judgment is denied." Christopher J. Davies, President & CEO of nIdea Corporation remarked, "while we are extremely pleased with the decision today, we feel that we have given the Long Island Wine Council Board of Director's numerous opportunities to reach an amicable accord. It appears that this case will continue for at least another year and ultimately NIDEA will succeed in protecting its business interests relating to LONGISLANDWINECOUNTRY.COM". NIDEA has owned and operated the LongIslandWineCountry.com domain and website since 1999. The website is an online magazine about the Long Island Wine region with stories about Long Island wines, restaurants and events. Since 2000. the company has operated expert guided tours of the region for consumers and corporate groups. The Long Island Wine Council was granted a federal trademark registration for the mark "LONG ISLAND WINE COUNTRY", a generic and geographically descriptive term not normally eligible for registration. The LIWC then used that registration in an attempt to force Nidea to relinquish its domain name, this led Nidea to petition the USPTO to cancel LIWC's mark on numerous grounds. For additional information about the Long Island Wine Country Trademark Dispute visit www.savelongislandwinecountry.com NIDEA Corporation is a national company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. For additional information visit www.nidea.com /// Media Contact:
Jennifer Tilliss Legal Counsel:
Gregory T. Meath, Esq. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NIDEA CORPORATION FILES FEDERAL PETITION TO CANCEL THE LONG ISLAND WINE COUNTRY TRADEMARK December 12, 2003 WASHINGTON,D.C nIdea Corporation, the owners of Long Island Wine Country.com, have today filed a petition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to cancel the Long Island Wine Country trademark recently registered to the Long Island Wine Council. Christopher J. Davies, President & CEO, commented that, "This difficult decision was made after the Long Island Wine Council's Board of Director demanded that our company pay a licensing fee for continuing to run our online magazine, and that we ultimately surrender the domain name WITHOUT fair and equitable remuneration. nIdea has published this website since 1999, more than three years BEFORE the LIWC obtained the trademark. This means that nIdea HAS RIGHTS to the domain name and the trademark. At this point and under the circumstances, it would be inappropriate to allow the LIWC to continue to claim the exclusive right to use the term Long Island Wine Country, a name that many businesses need to use to describe the location and nature of their goods and services.Specifically in the case of our Long Island Wine Country.com domain name, we have invested many thousands of dollars and hours of labor, positively promoting the region. Our website enjoys millions of hits from over 110,000 unique users annually. Our search engine ranking is #1 or 2 out of over 190,000 pages found on the Internet containing the words "Long Island Wine Country" or "Long Island Wine"." Press Contact:Christopher J. Davies President & CEO Email: cdavies@nidea.com |
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