dc irony

Too bad you can't sue them for infringement on your original idea....

heh......indeed!

"Document not found."

I got that too.

that because d/c has now cancelled the event. here is the update

Just a story on DC sponsoring the Lingerie Bowl at super bowl halftime...

Hey Nathan, thought you might find this mildly amusing...

Cheese company, Bandonites, lock horns over name

The Associated Press 12/18/2003, 1:00 a.m. PT

BANDON, Ore. (AP) - Bandon's Kettle Korn By the Sea does not make cheese. The Bandon Cheese Co. does, but not in Bandon. David Nevitt, who makes his kettle corn out of his house outside this south coastal town, sells it in the Bandon Cheese Co. store. But a few weeks back he got a letter from the cheese people saying they had trademarked the name.

"What are they going to do, sue everybody in the phone book who has the word 'Bandon' in their name?" Nevitt wondered.

Bandon Cheese marketing director Kathy Holstad sent a letter to Larry Stotts, of Bandon Coastal Ventures (who lives in the high desert town of Sisters and doesn't make cheese either) and to several other companies. The local phone book lists more than 60 Bandon this-or-thats, from a Quick Mart to a septic company. They don't make cheese, either. The city fathers of Bandon, which was named after a 400-year-old town in Ireland, not after the cheese, are taking this all very seriously and hiring a trademark lawyer. The issue could have international ramifications," wrote City Manager Matt Winkel to the company, which is owned by the Tillamook County Creamery Association a couple of hundred miles to the north, and which makes a lot of cheese.

Holstad wrote that consumers get confused by multiple goods and services offered under one name.

City Councilor Geri Procetto finds all this a bit strange. "If you go into Bandon True Value, you're not going to ask for cheese," she quipped.

That's a good thing. They don't sell it.

"If we have to trademark our city, we'll trademark our city," she said. It seems the Tillamook County Creamery Association bought Bandon Cheese in 2000 and registered two trademarks, the words "Bandon" or "Bandon's" and the Coquille River Lighthouse. Then the company closed its Bandon plant and now makes cheese in Tillamook and in Boardman in Eastern Oregon.

The Bandon plant, founded in the 1920s, is just a retail store.

Attorney Robert Miller says there now is the issue of calling it Bandon Cheese at all when it isn't made within hundreds of miles of the place. State law forbids labeling that "uses deceptive representations or designations of geographic origin in connection with real estate, goods or services."

Bandon wants Coos County District Attorney Paul Burgett to consider suing on behalf of consumers, who may have thought they were buying cheese made in Bandon.

Company officials say they are not called "Bandon Cheese" any longer. The term 'Bandon Cheese' refers to a brand of cheese. It's now produced by the company's artisan cheesemakers, using the Bandon recipe, the company said.

In April the company changed its name to Oregon Coast Foods although the label still reads "Bandon," the store advertises the cheese as "hand-cheddared in Bandon since

1900," and the letters sent to area businesses came from "Bandon Cheese."

For now, the company says it only wants Nevitt to change the name of his kettle korn and isn't concerned with product confusion with the hardware store or the septic people.

Nevitt says some Bandon residents have stopped buying the cheese.

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