Federal Judge Slaps Back Dino M. Zaffina in Darts Trademark Battle – Los Angeles News – The Informer
Odd story. Basically, some dart fan joins the Southern California Darts Association. They snub him by not using his middle initial, unlike, say, the SAG forcing Michael Fox and Jim Bullock to add middle initials. So, he finds out that there is no corporation with that name (as the former corporate entity lapsed). He registers a corporation with that name and tries to stop the association from using that name. After some surprising initial success, he met with a big ole Fail.
Not sure why he met with initial success (and no, I’m not making a pun regarding the snub), since this is a pretty straight forward issue. These folks were using the name. You can’t bounce them out simply by incorporating with that name. That would be like discovering that “The Beatles” never formed a corporate entity, so you register “The Beatles, Inc.” and try to keep Sir Paul and Ringo from making appearances together as a “Beatles Reunion”. Prior use, for the win.
