(Oh, and here’s a great children’s book you might enjoy reading with your kids)
Occasionally, following in the footsteps of research giants like the Gizmodo and Dudel, we like to scour the patent and trademark offices for new and exciting scooter developments going on behind the scenes. Sometimes it turns up some pretty hot discoveries but usually it’s just a bunch of minor bits. Today, our research turned up something with the potential to be quite sinister.
Imagine you own a retail store offering parts and services for vintage Vespas. Well according to this, not yet approved, service mark application; Piaggio & C. S.p.A. Corporation Italy wants to own the words “vintage Vespa”. No, not a graphical trademark to protect the Vespa logo, but the “Letters or words underlined and/or overlined by one or more strokes or lines; Overlined words or letters; Underlined words or letters”.
So, say the service mark application is approved… what does that mean? As a shop owner using those two words, you will have to register and pay a licensing fee to Piaggio. Nice, eh? Fortunately, “However, no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made.”
If you want to see it for your own eyes, go to the USPTO site and type “vintage vespa” in the Search Term box (hit enter). If you DON’T like it, you still have a chance to challenge the application.
13. October 2010 at 9:19 pm
How about “crappy old scooters”?
14. October 2010 at 7:07 am
No, I think they’ve already got the patent on that. :D – AHAHA!
I kid… I like old Vespas.
14. October 2010 at 9:27 am
Curious to know exactly what the terms of the lawsuit were when Piaggio came back to the US. From my understanding they gave away certain rights related to “Vintage Vespas” in order to regain the “Vespa” trademark name which they had abandoned.
14. October 2010 at 11:10 am
they have been trying to come up with something they can trademark for a while.
Italians bug me.
15. October 2010 at 4:54 pm
I might be supportive of Piaggio if they actually made a good effort to better support vintage vespas. Piaggio as a company has really dropped the ball in supporting owners of vintage scooters.