Re: Use of the Edmonton Oilers Trademarks
Dear Sirs:
NHL Enterprises Canada, L.P. (NHLEC), the licensing and marketing arm of the National Hockey League (NHL), represents the NHL and its member clubs, including the Edmonton Oilers, in trademark enforcement matters in Canada. We recently discovered that you are promoting and selling on your website t-shirts and other tops, as well as underwear, bags and baby bibs, that prominently display the Edmonton Oilers primary logo (“Oilers Logo”) with the word “OILERS” replaced with the word “LOSERS.”
The Edmonton Oilers hold valuable proprietary rights in and to their trademarks, including the Oilers Logo, through extensive commercial use and maintenance of trademark registrations, copies of which are attached for your reference. Your reproduction of the Oilers Logo with the replacement of the word “OILERS” by the word “LOSERS” in the same graphics (the “Altered Logo”) is clearly intended to be derogatory and has the effect of depreciating the value of the goodwill associated with the Oilers’ trade mark in violation of Canadian law.
We are advised by our Canadian trade mark counsel that the Edmonton Oilers would be entitled to an injunction granting a restraint on all further sales of any product bearing this Altered Logo, damages or, at its election, an accounting of your profits, delivery and destruction of all merchandise bearing the Altered Logo and any and all material used to prepare and print that Altered Logo, as well as their legal costs. Accordingly, to avoid action in this matter, we require that you take the following steps immediately:
1. cease all promotion, advertising and sale of any merchandise bearing the Altered Logo in question
2. surrender to us all such merchandise that you have in inventory, and all materials, printed, digital or otherwise, that are used to produce or print the Altered Logo
3. provide an accounting of all such merchandise sold to date and the resulting revenues
4. provide full contact details of any third party that produced artwork for the Altered Logo, or prints of the Altered Logo for use on merchandise or provided merchandise to you bearing the Altered Logo
and
5. provide your written undertaking that you will not use the Oilers Logo or any alternation, variation or imitation of that logo or the logo, crest or trade mark of any other NHL member club and will not otherwise violate the proprietary rights of the Edmonton Oilers, the NHL or any other NHL member hockey club in the future.
We require written confirmation of your compliance with these requirements by April 15, 2009. If we have your full compliance by this deadline, it should be possible to resolve this matter without the need to involve legal counsel.
K****** A. L**** Associate Counsel, Legal and Business Affairs
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