Minnesota Subaru Club Task Force

Trademarks MUST be enforced when a violator is found or you lose the trademark.
If Subaru knows we are infringing, they are legally required to sue or lose the trademark.
They would likely send a C&D first, but still. Get thier permission before doing anything.

 

i understand the concerns. When the time comes if subaru ever sends a letter to stop using the name then we can make the appropriate actions then(ie change name to minnesota subi club or something) but right now we should be happy that we got our first item completed...yah!

Next item on the list is to create leadership roles. What do you guys think we need as far as elected leadership roles?

 

Court Jester.

 

president, vice president, treasurer, secretary, and an administrator
then for each major event set up committees and have people nominated to them as they become necessary

 

I've been a bit out of the loop since I've been gone, but if you haven't thought of it yet. Might be a good idea to have the interested parties submit their qualifications for these roles? When you're ready for this step...

 

I don't think it would be too hard to get Subaru's permission to use it, though. Obviously if you're going through all the right channels to incorporate yourself, you're not hiding anything. It may cost some money tho ..

 

A new thread is open for the Task Force Roles

 

so the answer would be no. and if the LLC draws attention to our club, they could definitely come after us for the shirts, calendars, etc. etc.

wonderful

 

Please remember to keep things positive and constructive in this thread. Don't make me give you infractions for instigating people with your passive-aggressive negativity. If you disagree with something being done by the self-appointed "task force", please offer some constructive suggestions on a better way to go about the process.

 

Are the shirts, stickers, calendars, ... etc documented?

 

You know what I think is really sad?

There are a bunch of people getting to work on this, and instead of getting help, they are getting **** on by some people who either are too chicken to do the work themselves, or don't know anything about how to run a business. These people seem to think that a fully functioning corporation just happens overnight with no issues, roadblocks, or legal stuff. Perhaps instead of vindicating the people who are trying to do soemthing good for this community, a little help would be better?

 

X2 because someone has some kind of personal vendetta with Justin doesn't mean he needs to get **** on every time he, or ANYONE tries to do anything for the good of the site/club

 

So our goal is to become a full functioning corporation now?

 

How about this, our goal is to do SOMETHING other than sitting around on our asses and bitching that nothing gets done. But whatever. I am not getting involved in this kindergarten crap.

:roll:

 

I honestly don't have any beef with anybody here. I'm just being the devils advocate and trying to bring different perspectives.


Watch

I just deleted a few things from that list. LLC (moot point since it's already done), create checking account, and bring in funds.

Look how productive we can all be with those three omissions. Swag can be designed and offered on a per-purchase basis via places like cafe press.

The task force can get all kinds of productive stuff done without spending a penny. Again, the LLC part is done already, and if that makes people feel more legit, that's fine. But it wasn't necessary is the only point I'm making/have made.

Keep on doing stuff, there's no problem with that.

 

Off topic a bit here...but Jason you are so right....Cafepress is horrible.

 

the place we get our(grimmspeed) shirts is definitely the bomb. i'd highly recommend the club use them when the time comes...great guys and great prices. dirtyimpreza.com guys are using them now too.

 

I heard back from Northursalia. here is an excerpt from the email.

"The easiest way around it is to either A) not use any Subaru trademarks in the URL and (most importantly) sell nothing. Some of the websites were selling t-shirts or club merchandise with say something like subaruclub.com or stiforums.com on them, and Subaru whacked them too. For my part I was selling things on CafePress with pics I had done things like this

http://northursalia.com/photos/rbascii.gif

to (replacing parts of the photo with colored text that said ravensblade-impreza.com) which is probably what garnered the cease and desist legalese from FHI. I'd stay away from anything with Subaru, Impreza, WRX, STI, etc. in the URL and you should be fine."

I am sensing that we will get hit. Is it possible to change the name on the LLC documents to something which doesnt use trademarked material? Or is it too late to modify that since it has already been submitted?

 

paperwork as been submitted, there really isnt more that we can do. if subaru at some point wants to harass us then we can deal with it at that time, now lets move forward onto creating the leadership roles.

 

well ok
what about if the mission statement has something about subarus, but the club name (officially on the paperwork) doesn't?
mnsubi is still part of "subaru" i am sure that "subaru" knows that "subi" is a short

hmmmmmmmmm




let me ponder for a few days, there has to be something that isn't trademarked ..

 

I like the idea of doing something with Pleiades. The star cluster subaru got its name from.

 

I see what you're saying, I'm not advocating cafe press, just saying there are options out there. But the point is we can still do a lot of stuff moving forward without spending large chunks of change.

especially in light of this:

 

What happened to just having an online forum where people share information about Subaru's? Why does it have to be sooooo complicated?

 

thanks for the help!!



moving on...

 

MNTom, thank you for volunteering your help! I have added you to the first post.


"MNTom -specializing in marketing research and marketing development. I do almost all of my work on the internet. I have the capabilities and experience of creating questionnaires, data collection, tabulation, statistical analysis and reporting."

Justin

 

ok.. so in a lawsuit that will be great use of the clubs lack of funds

 

Wow, progress. I'm gone for a week and I come back and the LLC is already done, Minnesota Subaru Club LLC.

I wish I could help out with this, but with some changes at work and some plans at home I can't make this a priority right now. So I don't want to commit to something I can't follow through on.

I'm a little concerned with Subaru smacking down the "Subaru" in the LLC name. But I agree to move forward on things non-name related, just be sure to have a back-up plan in place so changing the name doesn't kill all the progress.

edit, wow, it actually says the LLC stuff was submitted on Feb 5th, the day after this thread was created.

 

no worries, we are all busy at times...any help at all is appreciated. yeah the date is a little screwy, jason and i were screwing around with the new online application process the night or night after this thread was created, i believe it saved our first copy(screwing around stuff) of the paperwork on the state's website that first night even though we didnt go through with the process. then when we went to actually do it it was still there and just completed the process. i should actually call the state to make sure everything is ok since we never actually hit the complete button that first time.

joel...post up in that leadership roles thread that pksublime posted with any of your ideas.

 

yeah, I'm hoping after this next month I'll have more time to help out. Maybe I can volunteer to do something. For long term comittments I'd like to help out more with my core skills, maybe web/technical stuff or graphic design stuff. Short term I can volunteer to help be a communication liason between mods/task force. But again, not until April probably. I'll try to get some ideas put together and posted up.

 

just starting some research on the whole trademark thing
first since we tried to notify subaru/fuji that we would like to use the name in an unrelated industry (we don't sell cars or car parts....) that they have no case as they refused correspondence
second there are other trademarks in the system that use the word subaru that are not owned by fuju heavy industries [subaru guru, nasioc incorporated]

yeah if you caught that, nasioc is also incorporated and having no problems.

i'm sure we can put disclaimers that the word subaru is a registered tradmark of fuji heavy industries and just never dispute that and we'll be fine

 

ok cool, thanks joel!

fyi to everyone, here is the thread pksublime started where we are discussing what leadership role we'd all like to see, everyone please feel free to post in this thread about it....

http://www.mnsubaru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22756

 

truth is....you're not sure. nobody is. You think that we'll be fine. and I do too, but if we're wrong, and get a cease and desist order......SOL doesn't begin to describe it. so I'd prefer to air on the paranoid side.

putting the word "subaru" in the LLC title is the biggest red flag we've put up yet. IF we get noticed, I'd be willing to bet that'd be why. so if it's at all possible to change the name (just on paper.....even just to MNS or something), that would be an extremely good idea.




We need to have an in-person meeting about this stuff before taking any [more] major steps, these kinds of decisions can't be made by online discussion, and even more importantly need to be opened up for input from the largest group possible. And we're hoping you 'task force' people would be willing to come to the meeting we moderators are already planning (although Todd has been extremely busy lately, so we haven't set a date yet, and the date's we were looking at are getting close enough that people won't have warning).

 

Sounds like a great idea.

 

Agreed.
Remember Subaru also sells shirts and stuff with the word Subaru on them. So does MN Subaru.
I'm not a trademark lawyer, but this is something you want to watch out for.

 

imo, scratch the identifix meeting place if you actually want to have a good turn out. there has been a meeting there for the last 3 years and nothing ever comes from it and its the same old stuff. people dont want to come to it for this reason. lets start down a new path here and have it at a new location...doesnt matter where, just somewhere else.

 

Davanis in Eden Prairie? they have a dec. party room and good food.

 

but its not free either, i really dont know where we should hold it, identification or wherever might just be the best place, or grimmspeed, but chux wont like that

 

Brunswick Bowling.. then we can order some of their food, and go bowling afterwards !!!!

Bielke5555555555 hook us up

 

From a non-biased standpoint, I've heard that GrimmSpeed might not be able to accommodate 40+ cars for parking. Someone correct me if I'm wrong though. If you're looking for a big turnout from participating members, this is something else to bear in mind.

 

I'm not the one that would be alienated by having a meet at grimmspeed. And there are more people who have a legit reason to not want to go to grimmspeed than identifix.

identifix has plenty of room for everyone, plenty of parking, a hoist (Fuji has offered to put his car up in the air and talk technical stuff), etc.

AFAIK, we don't have another facility like it at our disposal. those of you who have some sort of personal issue with that will just need to pick your wedgie and show up

that is, assuming we can actually get a date setup and get that rolling.....

 

yeah, we could probably fit 12 cars in the parking lot then the others would have to park on the street if we came here. it really doesnt matter where we go..just some place new that is a central location so we can maximize attendance.

 

chux its not about having a wedgie..its about starting fresh and on a new path, a path of getting stuff done and making the club.

 

alright, then we should use identinetflix