The trademark “Bitcoin” was purchased in April by the British company A. B. C. IPHoldings South West LLC, which is now threatening to sue entrepreneur, selling t-shirts with the logo of bitcoin.
Such unexpected news user AlarmingAdhesiveness shared on Reddit.
According to him, on 25 may he received a letter from the company saying that it owns a United Kingdom trademark for “Bitcoin”.
“At first I couldn’t believe it, because I know that bitcoin and its logo in the public domain, and even in the United States a similar request was rejected”, — writes AlarmingAdhesiveness.
However, more detailed analysis has confirmed that the company A. B. C. IPHoldings South West LLC actually owns this trademark. The corresponding application was filed in December 2017 to the British intellectual property Office and granted last month.
The action of the trademark “Bitcoin” applies to classes of goods which include shoes, clothes, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages.
Writes AlarmingAdhesiveness, he hopes to help the users who may be more familiar with the trademark laws and will help him to understand how what happened was possible.
Recall that in April 2016 the trademark “Bitcoin” have been registered in Russia, however, as stated by the then member of the Board of the Blockchain.community Alex Fork, LLC “Bitcoin” has no plans for commercial use of the mark. On the contrary, according to him, the entire registration process has been started solely in order to prevent possible monopolization of the brand Bitcoin in one hand and the subsequent draining money from Russian users of the cryptocurrency.
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