Cease and Desist
This must be the week that trademark attorneys are out scouting the internet for trademark infringements. First Tom at "Fermentation" has to drop his S. Now, it seems that a small retail shop in Calistoga is bothered by my use of the name Cincinnati Wine Garage here at my little retail shop in the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati. Just got served with a cease and desist letter due to the charge that I have misappropriated the name and am causing irreparable damages to same plus attorney fees. Nothing against attorneys, some of my best friends are attorneys, even my ex-wife (I will leave that one alone!), but I hate paying attorneys.
Maybe I am small minded due to living in the Midwest but I am dumbfounded about this. I can't say I have seen too many Californians coming to the store, or calling me or emailing for their wine orders. I heard Californians were much smarter than that. Hell, I went to school there. And isn't all the good wine in California anyway so there is no need for them to call me to buy wine.
My question to the blogging community is, are you confused by my store, Cincinnati Wine Garage, versus the Wine Garage in Calistoga which I hear has a fine selection of hand-picked wines that Todd has sourced in his travels to the small wineries in California. In fact if you live out there I would suggest, demand, that you go there. Don't bother me in Cincinnati with small orders of micro-production wines. We only sell Kendall Jackson here, not that there is anything wrong with that.
posted by jens at cincinnati wine at 11:13 AM
5 Comments:
I am confused! I thought Madisonville was in California?
I searched for the other site, and I guess one reason why they are miffed is that cincinnati wine garage comes up first in a search of "wine garage". But then when you look at their site you find its very hard to see what they have in the store. In fact I couldn't get the page to open. So how do you order wine from these folks?
Their wine club page does open. Just on a whim I did a search of "wine club" and there are a number of sites that include wine club in their name. Now is using a name that has wine club in it not something that upsets people, but wine garage is? If so then its a very picky, nasty little world.
Mike
This is ridiculous. It probably IS because of the Google situation...and I'd hate to see you change your name over something like this.
I'm no lawyer...but unless they have reach into OH...I can't see any way that this threat is credible in the least.
Unfortunately, this is pretty typical (northern) California behavior. I have been living in the San Francisco Bay area for the last 7 years and have found that these self-proclaimed "open-minded" people are in fact extremely narrow-minded and particularly whiny. They're the "France" of the United States if you will... for them it matters to matter. I don't want to start a political war, but they're also very proud of their extremely liberal, far left-wing ideals, however, only up until the point where extreme left-wing liberal ideals are no longer convenient for them... I think this is a good example of that.
Hello, I have been to the wine garage(I am a refugee from the world of plonk, aka Cal.) It is a small roadside shop with the worst pot holes in the parking lot I have ever experienced, hence you may need to go to a true garage after your visit, yet I digress. I do not think any of their customers would accidentally drive to Cincinnati to buy wine. They really should get over it and spend their money improving the shop and leave the blogger world alone GEEZ.
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