12/13/19

SMRI loses Sturgis trademark crusade


The Chair of the South Dakota Republican Party is Jewish but as a bail bondsman he always cuts a fat hog on crimes committed in Sturgis anyway.
Judge Jeffrey Viken has ruled the Sturgis mark is invalid. The court ruling is consistent with an 8th Circuit Court ruling earlier this year. Since 1996, words associated with the rally, specifically "Sturgis", have been trademarked. The phrases "Sturgis Rally and Races" and "Sturgis Motorcycle Rally" were not trademarked but Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, Inc., claimed ownership of them. SMRI still has the trademark for several words, such as “Sturgis Bike Week,” “The Legend Lives On,” and “Take the Ride to Sturgis.” [KBHB Radio]
The City of Sturgis was not a party in the case.

Appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 Jeff Viken is the chief judge for the District of South Dakota.

A South Dakota school board voted unanimously to cancel homecoming activities that would have featured a football game between the Sturgis Scoopers and the Pine Ridge Thorpes after a car bearing hate speech and a symbol painted on it that some said resembled a swastika was smashed by Sturgis students. Sturgis routinely ranks as one of the worst towns in South Dakota but the reasoning is hardly mysterious. It's all about the money prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit and sex trafficking bring to the SDGOP destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.

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