Tag: Navy SEALs

Categories
News Trademarks

Nearly all SEAL Team 6 trademark applications abandoned with USPTO

Navy SEALs

For individuals and companies trying to cash in on SEAL Team 6, it can be an uphill battle.  First it was Disney that tried trademarking “SEAL Team 6” only days after Osama bin Laden was killed in early May.  Then others quickly followed, including the Department of the Navy itself which filed for a trademark on “SEAL Team”, a story that first broke here in mid May.

On the heels of the news that Disney abandoned their trademark filings in late May which covered toys, games, clothing, footwear and more, most others have done the same.

M. Z. Berger & Co, abandoned its trademark filing on May 27, two days after Disney.

Justice is Done filed for abandonment on June 21.

There are still some holdouts though.

Watchmaker RESCO Instruments, which was founded in 2009 and claims to have its watches used by 90 active duty US Navy SEALs, looks to show no signs of giving up on its trademark application.

Jon Narmi, an individual out of Iowa who filed for a trademark in June, hasn’t abandoned his application either, which covers fiction works, namely, novels and books.

(Photo of Navy SEALs preparing for a mission via the United States Navy)

Categories
Disputes Movies News Trademarks

Updates on Top 5 Fusible stories, May

US Navy SEALs coming out of the water

In May 2011, the United States Navy SEALs drew a lot of news coverage on the web following the killing of Osama bin Laden.  But the SEALs weren’t the only story on Fusible that attracted readers.  

Zynga hinted at plans of developing the next top iPhone game with the registration of hangmanwithfriends.com, the Navy won the battle over the SEAL Team 6 trademark and filed its own marks, Sony Pictures got rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about killing Osama bin Laden, former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley sold The Inquisitr on Flippa for $330,000, and UberMedia gave up its domain claim on Twitteripad.com.

Hangman with Friends– There hasn’t been any news regarding Zynga’s plans for “Hangman with Friends”, other than the company registering the domain name hangmanwithfriends.com.  Considering one of the first word games kids learn to play is hangman, you can bet if Zynga does launch a hangman game on the iPad or iPhone, it could very well be the next top ranking iOS game.   

UberMedia and Twitter– After my story about UberMedia purchasing the domain name twitteripad.com was posted, the company deleted the domain from its portfolio.  The good news: the company avoided another possible trademark dispute with Twitter like the one it encountered over UberTwitter.  The bad news: someone in China registered the domain and is now redirecting users to a fake Apple survey page.  These types of websites often lead to scams or other problems for people, like computer viruses.  Either way, it looks like UberMedia made a smart play by dropping the name.  The company just raised another $5.6 million and its entire business revolves around Twitter.

The Inquistr — The Inquisitr (inquisitr.com) founded by former TechCrunch writer and b5media co-founder Duncan Riley in May 2008, sold for $330,000 USD on Flippa.   Two days after my story was published, The Inquisitr ran its own story “Duncan dishes on Inquisitr sale, future plans” that said the sale was complete and the site had changed hands.  “With everything said and done, Duncan has disclosed some facts and figures about the sale of the site. Final sale price was 10% over the reserve of $300,000, at $330,000. Keeping in with the threes trend, it went for 30x the monthly net after writers’ expenses” wrote Kim LaCapria. 

Navy’s SEAL Team trademark battle — I was the first to report (before any other news site or blog) that the Department of Navy filed a trademark for “SEAL Team” following Disney’s trademark filings on SEAL Team 6.  The story got immediately picked up by MediaPost who attributed their story here, but other major media outlets that reported on the news shortly thereafter, failed to give credit.  It can be frustrating as a blogger to see so many news sites and blogs not attribute the sources of their articles.  Ultimately, Disney abandoned their trademark filings.

Sony Pictures — Deadline.com reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment acquired the rights to Kathryn Bigelow’s film about killing Osama bin Laden.  Originally called “killing bin laden”, Kathryn Bigelow had apparently decided to change the film’s title.  Regardless, Sony Pictures registered nearly a dozen domain names including thekillingofbinladenmovie.com.  As of today, the film remains untitled, but the domain names have started forwarding to sonypictures.com.

Categories
News

Former SEAL operator lets several names expire like NavySEALTeam6.com

Navy Seal Team 6

According to his bio on the LinkedIn website, Mark Matzeldelaflor, was a SEAL operator with SEAL Team 5.  His skills include unconventional warfare, mobility operations, surveillance & reconnaissance, demolition, counter terrorism, wilderness survival and other military expertise. 

But along with his impressive military resume, are other interests like networking, business development, joint ventures, and other adrenaline inducing activities as he puts it.  

Mark Matz domain names

Although it’s not listed on his LinkedIn website, domain names appear to be another one of Mark’s interests, at a time when the popular Navy SEALs are getting a lot of attention from all over the world after Navy SEAL Team 6 killed the world’s number one terrorist, Osama bin Laden.

And it just so happens that Mark (who re-directs MarkMatz.com to his LinkedIn site) owns several Navy SEAL domain names, but the funny thing is, many of them have expired and are now pending renewal or deletion.

The SEAL domain names that expired on April 16, 2011 include: navysealteam6.com, ussealteam.com, sealteam4.com, navysealteamfour.com and even navysealteam5.com, the same team Mark served with up until 2009.

SEAL Team 6 is a hot property

I can’t imagine how a person could overlook renewing domain names like these, especially when news of the Navy SEALs has been on the front page of every website. 

But I’ll take a guess that they will be renewed before it’s too late.

I’ve reached out to Mark for comment and will update this post if I hear back.

Here’s a snippet of the Whois information of NavySEALTeam6.com,

Domain Name: NAVYSEALTEAM6.COM
      Created on: 16-Apr-08
      Expires on: 16-Apr-11
      Last Updated on: 17-Feb-11