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Re: Trademark of Sunbeam

To: 65Tiger@comcast.net
Subject: Re: Trademark of Sunbeam
From: Theo Smit <tsmit@shaw.ca>
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 23:17:12 -0600
Hi Curtis,
The offending trademark was granted to "Safir Engineering" (UK) in 
1985... they applied in April, the application was made public in June, 
and it was granted in October of that year.

http://www.autonews.com/article.cms?articleId=41173

When Ford asked Safir if they'd please relinquish the trademark (in the 
appropriate lawyerese, I'm sure), both parties adopted a fairly 
adversarial attitude right out of the box. End result: Nobody wins 
except the various legal teams.

Apparently they're still at it:
http://www.canadiandriver.com/news/050315-3.htm

There are a few GT40 owners in Calgary, but I don't know what the 
opinion of the GT40 community is regarding Safir vs Ford. Safir started 
out doing production of spares and 'continuation parts' the same way 
that, say, Sunbeam Specialties has, or Kirkland has with the Cobra, and 
they've been building complete cars for twenty years. Seems like they've 
got a pretty serious investment in the marque.

Theo





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