I’m a climber / skier / runner etc based out of Colorado and between my wife and we’ve spent a small fortune with backcountry.com. I didn’t know about any of this. Suing a maker of backcountry skis? Well, fuck you too, private equity jerkoffs. I’m going to light up my rep on this and let them know my spend and my recommendations are going elsewhere.
Edit, @skierjerry, et, al, here's what I just sent my rep:
Heya <person>,
I read an article about Backcountry in the Colorado Sun that really disappointed me. Your employer has adopted ugly business tactics and begun using its size to attack smaller businesses who have the ubiquitous term “backcountry” in their name.
Please look at my lifetime spend with Backcountry as well as that of my wife. It is significant. It also stops now, and I’ll be making significant contributions to the legal funds of the boutique makes and businesses that your employer is assaulting.
I wish you nothing but the best on a personal level and hope that your employer chooses to take a better path."
Worth a mention...Colorado Sun is a great example of what local journalists can do after local legacy organizations are snapped up by national/global organizations.
After the Denver Post was acquired by Alden Global Capital, the paper's hedge fund owner,they laid of 1/3 of newsroom staff to maintain a profit margin on the property in the 20 percent range.
Several of those laid off (and some volunteered to migrate), they formed the Colorado Sun, which is online-only and does actual deep investigations locally. It's probably still hard and the money isn't easy, but its better than what we had!
I was quite surprised to see a Sun article on HN today. Been a member as soon as I moved to Denver last year and have loved seeing it be such a high quality source of journalism.
I chatted with a rep last night and they were very responsive, said "our managers are listening to customer feedback."
Don't forget, Black Diamond laid off much of the Utah engineering staff and their climbing cams will now be made in China... Not sure what other gear is taking that fate. Looks like it's Metolious Master Cams for me now.
That's crazy. China loves to replace parts with "equivalent materials." My employer has been spending the last 3 months resolving Chinese QC issues with metal fabrication such as ignoring critical tolerances or broken welds. Considering how devastating it would be for a carabiner or ice axe to fail in the field it would be hard for me to trust outsourced manufacturing.
It's everything. Literally everything. It's what I believe is going to hold up Chinese manufacturing, regardless of how much better it is now compared to the 90's or early 2000's.
As another example - Jorgenson Pony clamps were made in Chicago until they closed down (like 15 years ago). They're the gold standard for woodworking clamps. Solid as a rock. The company announced they were re-making clamps. In China. At the world's largest clamp making plant.
They're garbage now. Materials are cheaper. The QC is nowhere near as good as they used to be. The price is more, even adjusted for inflation, than what they were when they were Chicago made - because people are buying the trusted brand name and getting burned for it.
It's just sad. I can't imagine that I would ever trust something like climbing gear to outsourcing. No thanks.
This is highly rational behavior for hired CEOs — you’re there for 5-10 years and paid based on stock price, so it’s in your best interest to sell shoddy products under the venerable brand name in the highest quantities possible, and cash out before the market discovers that your brand name is worthless (cf all of the venerable kitchen brands like All-Clad and Wusthof that now have Chinese junk lines).
This is why the father to son family business model may prove more enduring.
I doubt any CEO's compensation is tied to anything beyond five years; and, I bet even terms at five years are sparse limited to a few giant names who have to (like Tim Cook) otherwise the stock price would collapse and that's it.
I'd like to add: there is no incentive for it either, shareholders want returns NOW, and so they want CEOs to act in their interest NOW. Most shareholders aren't looking at their "ownership" stake with compassion for employees at the company, or any form of responsibility to other stakeholders, but solely for their own bottom line.
>there is no incentive for it either, shareholders want returns NOW, and so they want CEOs to act in their interest NOW.
Many of the biggest shareholders are major pension funds with 30 to 50 year time horizons. They absolutely do NOT want "returns NOW" with the implicit assumption that future quarters don't matter.
They absolutely do NOT want "returns NOW" with the implicit assumption that future quarters don't matter.
That is true but it is also true that they can’t risk waiting 30 years only to find their investment is worthless. Hence the insistence on quarterly reporting.
I know this is the received wisdom, but as a shareholder, I emphatically do not want this. I want long-term value, as I am a long-term investor. I hate that I have to watch out for shady things like this and adjust my holdings accordingly.
I always thought this was a weird definition of "rational". If you're already rich, which I assume most hired CEOs are, why is prioritizing money over people a more rational decision? Is that money going to change their life in any meaningful way? Is it any less correct to say it's in their best interest to stop working as soon as they have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their life, to minimize stress and maximize lifetime?
I understand that it's rational behavior for someone driven exclusively by money, but that's an important qualification. Most people are not money robots, so they aren't given these jobs.
It's the corporate structure. The CEO either grows the year over year profits or he gets punished/fired by the board. Boards pick CEOs based on a history of delivering growth at any cost (this is one of the irrational decisions, they should prioritize long term growth over short term, but they rarely do). This in turn provides a strong incentive to CEOs to make bad long term decisions if it means short term gains, because they either won't be around to see the eventual collapse (having moved on to another CEO position) or else they take the long term plan and get fired by the board for not providing enough growth (or worse, reduction).
But it shouldn't be a strong incentive, right? Getting fired from a CEO position is fine, you're almost certainly set for life. I understand this is sort of a circular argument, because anyone who doesn't buy into this incentive structure won't be hired as CEO, but my point is that somebody who is willing to go along with this system isn't really behaving rationally in the normal sense of the word.
> If you're already rich, which I assume most hired CEOs are, why is prioritizing money over people a more rational decision?
Generally, a non-founder CEO is a ferociously competitive person--probably to the point of being pathological. They often "play poker" in situations where there is very little upside to doing so.
Great salespeople are often the same way, they simply can't turn it off.
You are asking a leopard to change his spots after he has started eating the antelope.
I understand, I just don't think we should describe that behavior as "rational". In casual conversation, the word means "sensible, logic-driven decisions that any person with good judgement would take". Here we're describing behavior driven by a particular niche, unnatural rationale, and pretty much any behavior can be explained that way.
I really dislike this kind of reasoning. Saying this is "highly rational" is saying the only value is money. Everything else can be set aside if it leads to more money. Even if people get hurt or worse using shoddy equipment. There is no place for empathy, at a sociopathic level. I'd think that a few millennia of civilization would give more value to notions of altruism, honesty, not constantly trying to scam your fellow man.
This is a sort of "Ayn Rand'ian" rationality in which the only thing that matters is what you're getting out of the deal independently of how devoid of empathy your worldview is.
The way it's been explained to me is that it's proportional to how much money you're spending. If you think you're getting a great deal from the Chinese, then the Chinese think it's reasonable to rip you off.
Whereas a manufacture in another country might say: "For that little money, I won't do the job.", in China the answer is more like "For that little money, I'll do the job [but I'm going to rip you off, and for how little you're paying, you should already know you're going to get ripped off.]"
Unfortunately I don't have more details; it's something I heard a few years ago from a Chinese coworker. He was explaining that quality products can be produced in China, but you have to pay for that quality just like anywhere else. And it happens that when American companies outsource to China, they're often looking for the cheapest bidder.
It’s also crazy given China trade talks right now. Seems like at least something to postpone a year or so. Or maybe they already feel they have the shutoff options covered.
Black Diamond makes a lot more than just walking sticks. But even if that's all they made ..
You're seriously underestimating how hard it might to to engineer and test even something as seemingly simple as a walking stick. These are lightweight, high-tech materials we're talking about (carbon fiber), which even SpaceX gave up on for their latest spacecraft. They're also collapsible/foldable. Simply put, this is harder than you think it is.
I have no idea, I've never made an artificial walking stick. Good strong wood is quite sturdy however, but not nearly as light as a synthetic walking stick. Trying to replicate the strength of a hard wood in a very lightweight synthetic material is probably a challenging engineering task.
Anyway I'd think production/manufacturing and quality assurance would be more to blame, particularly if the same products used to perform better than now.
Enough to keep your manufacturer from doing something stupid.
Designing the walking stick is simply the start. The problem is that you specified some really expensive materials with exotic manufacturing requirements that your supplier probably doesn't understand unless they are in aerospace.
Of course, aerospace manufacturers are ferociously expensive, and your customer can't really tell the difference if you are 1 or 2% less effective, but they can tell if you are 10% cheaper, so you start downgrading your manufacturing.
And then the problems start. The new manufacturer probably doesn't understand exotic materials as well, or they would be an aerospace supplier charging you more money. So, maybe they don't apply a cross layer, maybe they change the binding agent, maybe they use a cheaper material.
How do you, as the manufacturer, know?
You would have to put people on quality assurance analysis, but those are valuable engineers.
For a product that is $200. Max. For a company that has a revenue of roughly $100 million a year and basically no profit.
So, go find a company that charges $500-$1000 for your sticks and creates an actually good product, or suck it up and buy the Chinese crap.
I'm not sure if I see what's wrong with that. Like it or not, electronics manufacturing is centered around China and the APAC region. Trying to set up manufacturing outside that region, especially for a company that doesn't specialize in electronic goods, simply doesn't make sense.
Brother I'm livid. I understand that a company has to protect a trademark, and I've been in the protecting position. But there are actions you have to take and actions you do not, and BC seems to be taking it to the extreme.
The thing that really pisses me off is that they are attacking people in business because they love the sport. These boutique makers are often just scraping by and don't have the margins to sustain much resistance at all.
I understand the desire to protect your trademark, but if you want to make a trademarked brand part of your business, maybe don't build your business around a generic term?
Yup, I'm switching exclusively to Moosejaw until Backcountry is a little more reasonable here. Obviously they have to enforce their trademark to avoid losing it, but some of these lawsuits are egregious imo.
FYI - Moosejaw is now owned by Walmart, so if you're trying to ethically "vote with your dollars" it might not be the best choice.
I buy essentially all my gear from the REI co-op, who seem to have both customer-friendly return policies as well as genuine commitments to environmental standards for the gear they stock.
REI is my favorite place for outdoor gear. Return policies aren’t as good as they used to be. You can get around the return policies by buying high end gear. I had a goretex jacket where the membrane taping failed after 8 years and the manufacture replaced the jacket for free.
Almost everyone has cut back on their replacement guarantees. LL Bean is another company that used to basically have a no questions asked policy.
I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset. Or if it's that more and more stuff is made in the same Chinese factories and they literally tend not to "make stuff like they used to."
"Increasingly, a small, but growing number of customers has been interpreting our guarantee well beyond its original intent. Some view it as a lifetime product replacement program, expecting refunds for heavily worn products used over many years. Others seek refunds for products that have been purchased through third parties, such as at yard sales."
Well, of course, LL Bean isn't going to say "And, besides, our stuff is a lot crappier than it used to be." Some people have been doing this sort of thing forever. Though I find it perfectly believable that it's become more common--admittedly an assumption at least somewhat rooted in generational stereotypes.
Yeah, but we all know jerks who've been pulling that scam with Craftsman for years too, and I believe it's a large part of what made them less profitable too.
Turns out that a "forever" guarantee lasts longer than shifting moral standards.
I know of at least one person who would routinely buy stuff and return it after a season of use to get a refund. That guy was a real asshole though. But still, people like him ruined it for the rest of us.
Sounds like a guy I knew who would "buy" a brand new TV just before the Super Bowl, and then return it immediately after.
This was before all consumer electronics were consolidated into a few chains, so he was able to go to a different place each year.
These days there are companies that monitor that sort of thing and will alert the stores when you try to return stuff. But considering the state of online shopping, I wonder if he's still doing it.
> I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset.
I think that's the rationale they gave, and I believe them. My brother has pushed what I consider the moral limits of generous return policies a couple of times, and given what I've seen at REI scratch and dent sales, I think other people are as well.
I believe Nordstrom still has basically an unlimited return policy. They sell a surprising amount of outdoor gear too. Arcteryx, North Face, Patagonia, etc.
Most of the stuff in the stores is those brands fashion lines, but their website regularly has more outdoor focused gear. I even once bought a Snow Peak backpacking stove from them.
> I'm not sure whether it's a case of more people arguably abusing the spirit if not the letter of the policy as part of a modern take everything you can mindset.
That's probably a part of it, a long running joke in the skier community was that "REI is an acronym for Return Every Item."
That plus blatantly notably lower quality Chinese production probably put an end to it.
Weird. I've noticed a strong increase in the quality of their products over the past few years. I have a REI magma down bag from them and it's awesome. Their performance wear has taken a step up, too. I seriously considered a rain shell from them, but ended up buying a Mammut on sale.
One of the only real quality disappointments I've had with REI was fairly recently when about a 3 year old lightly-used camp sleeping pad started slow leaks from all over the pad. Obviously whatever material they used to keep the air on the inside had just broken down. I probably should have at least tried to return it but I couldn't be bothered. Looking online, I was far from the only person with this problem.
"For life" is such a misleading statement I'm surprised companies get away with using it without running into legal trouble. It most definitely does not mean that your jacket is guaranteed to last as long as you're alive. They are not talking about your life, they are talking about "useful life of a product", which can mean pretty much anything.
My ski jackets which are goretex easily last 10+ years. Membranes are things that usually fail. I had a raincoat membrane fail while I was in Thailand during the monsoon season. It was a cheap rain coat at a 1/3 the price of a goretex equivalent. REI wouldn’t take back the raincoat even though it was only 4 years old so I replaced it with goretex active coat which is still going strong though I burned a couple holes in it that I had to plug with wax. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a waterproof membrane to last the life of garment. Most of my camping gear is 20 years old and still works fine.
I've had bad experiences with their garage sales, buying products that say "too heavy" or "didn't like fit" but are just broken. Like at least give products a look over, especially electronics that can't easily be tested by a customer in store. Spent like 3k one year at REI, then was sold broken products that they didn't take back. Dividends don't accumulate on sale products so their pricing isn't competitive - I think once the bubble popped for me I realized REI isn't special
Well, specifically, one that I remember was a solar charger. I couldn't exactly go outside and let it sit in the sun all day to see if it worked before buying. What set me off was when I asked them about it, they said, "hey its hit or miss. Actually we have another one next month, try your luck again!"
So I mean, its minor, and maybe I'm being petty, but it irritated me enough to stop buying gear there. Esp given how much I'd spent on winter camping gear the months before. Started trying to support local shops more where I can, and buying online elsewhere.
I don't really see the problem there to be honest. When it comes to electronics at the garage sale, I usually don't purchase unless I can tell that it's working or isn't difficult to fix. There could be a number of things wrong with electronics that don't show on the surface. One of the downsides to the garage sale is that sales are final. Basically, you took a chance on a risky second-hand product and the fortune wasn't in your favor.
> REI is one of my favorite stores in the world. It's hard for me to come up with a reason not to like them.
That's easy. Pretty much every single non-REI branded item that they sell in the store is insanely marked up compared to what it can be bought in the brand's store.
Agreed. I've been a member for a while now and REI's standard prices are pretty average if not a little high, but they have enough really good sales during the year (plus the member discounts) to make up for anything you'd consider high price. Not to mention the garage sales can be a gold mine.
It is definitely the case for ski gear ( skis/boots ), bike gear, cold weather gear, helmets, backpacks, etc. Northface store? 25% off. REI? List price. Columbia store? 25% off. REI? List price. Patagonia store? 15% off. REI? List price. Atomic REI? List price in Feb. Atomic at EVO? 25% off in Jan. Yeti at REI? List price. Yeti pretty much anywhere else? 10% off.
People justify it because of the dividends gimmick. Hell, I fell the first year for it myself.
I don't think REI moves as much ski/snowboard gear as a more local shop would, but they have seasonal sales on the same items you just mentioned every year, and their anniversary sale is usually pretty good. Not to mention their outlet store often has additional sales on items that haven't sold, plus the garage sale.
The best 'deal' I found at REI was a ENO DoubleNest hammock for $12 at the garage sale, perfect condition. A near second would be a Black Diamond Access (I think) insulated hoodie for about $100, lasting me more than 6 years as my insulated layer for climbing, snowboarding, all around and casual use.
Last Season: REI great "snow sale" ~ 20% on Columbia gear. At the same time Columbia has the same stuff at ~75% off. Dick's has the same Columbia gear at 50% off.
REI is a cult. 10 years ago it was a cult that brought lots of things to the members because the brands sucked at selling on the internet or marketing on Instagram. Now the brands adjusted, and REI still behaves as if this is 2009.
> No. Their prices are consistent with the MSRP of the brand name products they stock.
And their competitors base line is pretty much always MSRP - 10%. That's why REI pretty much never shows up on Slickdeals apart from their blow out, out of season sale.
To be honest, their return policy is still awesome. You can return things after a whole year of use. They changed it because people were abusing the return policy and treating it like a rental.
It makes sense that they stopped offering a lifetime policy. 1 year is still generous. They also offer price adjustments up to 2 weeks after purchase (if a sale starts, for example).
That’s the thing. A company like REI wants to do good by its customers, but a large enough fraction of them make it into a game. I knew people who’d buy something outgrow it and return it to buy the new thing they wanted. I mean, c’mon, but there you have it, the same old ugly reason we can’t have nice things for long. People abuse these niceties till they adjust or die.
yeah, well (and this might be a stretch for you to consider) maybe they reduced the return window because people like you expect every item to last indefinitely.
These days I put a real premium on how a product is supported after I purchase it.
I paid almost $200 for an Outdoor Research rain jacket back in 2017. Last month the zipper broke off, and they immediately sent me a replacement. Now I won't think twice about what brand I buy the next time anyone in my family needs a lightweight rain jacket.
I used to be a long-distance road cyclist, and I paid a premium for the Dura Ace brand for chains, cassettes, chainrings, shifters, etc. On two different occasions something failed in the 3rd year of use, and both times Shimano replaced the broken part under warranty. Had I gone with cheaper kit, I would have had a slightly less quality ride experience and would have been out the cash to buy replacements out of warranty.
I bought a pair of L.L.Bean boots 2 months before they suddenly dropped their lifetime replacement policy. Guess what brand of boots I'm not going to touch with a ten-foot pole now?
Finally, I owned a Tesla for almost 3 years. For the first year Tesla honored its warranty for about a dozen issues that came up. I was willing to work with them through the issues because of how responsive to the problems they were at first. By the time I was at year 3, they were refusing to fix anything -- most notably, a shudder in the half-shaft that happened under moderate acceleration. I immediately got rid of it and won't ever purchase another car from that company.
It's all about how you treat your customers after the sale. Shimano and Outdoor Research have a fan for life. L.L. Bean and Tesla have earned someone who now discourages others from purchasing their products.
FWIW, MSR and Osprey are tiptop as well, both have replaced products for me even though I was just looking for parts to fix it myself (MSR), or giving feedback on how a pack wore after 6 years of heavy use (osprey).
Maybe they just like to see their gear after some proper usage to see how it's holding up.
The only caveat seems to be that they now require you to have the original receipt, otherwise people would still be buying 30 year old clothing at garage sales and exchanging it (which is the reason they had to drop the lifetime guarantee to begin with).
Check out Let My People Go Surfing as well, he talks more about how they've discontinued certain colors because of the environmental/social effects of mining certain pigments/dyes. It's very inspirational. I fear for what might happen after he's gone. Yvon Chouinard is the ruthless visionary we need for adventure sports equipment, something like Steve Jobs was for tech.
As for returns, I'm not sure they're any "better" than REI, but I fully buy into their philosophy of "if it's broken, fix it" and "don't buy this jacket." They try to be the antithesis of fast fashion and consumerism. If your jacket's zipper or stitching fails after 10 years of taking you to incredible heights, and you feel entitled to a replacement, you are delusional. Either fix it, or pony up the dough for a new one. You're not just investing in a new piece of clothing when you exchange money for it, you are investing in the company and its continued craftsmanship, R&D and training of newcomers to keep making and improving things. And in Patagonia's case, lobbying for better standards environmentally and sociopolitically. Asking for a refund or replacement is basically a vote for offshoring, reduced quality, carelessness towards the environment, etc as far as I'm concerned.
They'll even repair gear made by others. Which is putting your money where your mouth is, if you ask me. They'd rather keep your gear, made by someone else, going than sell you new stuff.
> Obviously they have to enforce their trademark to avoid losing it
This is a commonly repeated myth. The circumstances in which you could even possibly lose control of a trademark in this way (genericization, abandonment) are very narrow and difficult to apply. For more context, try https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
Why not look for a local option for your gear? I understand that some equipment may not be available locally but surely you can find most of what you need. If their prices aren't competitive with online retailers, look at what else you get beyond the equipment such as customer service, repairs, etc.
Over the last few years I've been trying to shift my spending from online to local businesses. It's been a miserable failure. Hours and hours wasted trying to avoid the Amazons of the world, only to end up having to order online because local selection is basically non-existant. The town I'm in only has a population of 120k so I don't expect to be able to find niche items, but I've honestly been surprised at just how difficult it is to buy relatively high quality items at all in the local market.
Yup, the local markets often only cater to the entry-level, casual users. That's where their profit margins are. If you need something niche/higher-end your only options are to go online. Otherwise you get the usual response: "We don't have that in stock but can order it online for you. It should be here in 2 - 4 weeks."
That excessive delay probably isn't fundamental and probably represents an opportunity to improve logistics and get that down to 1-5 days depending on how niche and how centrally the customer is located.
Amazon is brilliant for charging the customer 120 bucks a year for shipping and not making them feel the pinch on each transaction.
>The town I'm in only has a population of 120k so I don't expect to be able to find niche items
This caught my eye: is 120,000 people considered a small market?
I grew up in a town of 5,000, work in a small city of 50,000 (which has plenty of amenities, including multiple independent outdoor sports stores) and now live in a village of 200 people.
There isn't a single ramen restaurant in this town. Nor is there any donut or ice cream shop that isn't a chain like Dunkin' Donuts or Cold Stone. The only outdoor store is a hunting store Gander Mountain or a sports oriented store like Dick's Sporting Goods. The only decent kitchen store is a Bed Bath and Beyond. The only "boutique" store I've found that I've found reason to go back to is a grill store, but even they didn't have something pretty basic like a flat burger press. Maybe Cedar Rapids, IA isn't a small market, but it doesn't feel like there are very many local options at all.
Sounds like it might be a demographic problem. Slightly larger town in Colorado here; we probably have 10-15 outdoor sports stores, and half are local.
Actually, I just checked again to make sure I wasn't a liar, and we did get a dedicated outdoor goods store but it wasn't until toward the end of last year. I did also finally get a leather repair shop for my boots who also moved in last year. Hopefully smaller retailers are recognizing a gap in the market and starting to move in. If someone wants to start a hipster ice cream or donut shop, the Cedar Rapids, IA market is all but uncontested.
You don't necessarily need to avoid ordering online to avoid giving money to the giant retail companies. A lot of the best small gear manufacturers sell their gear directly on their websites.
And with those new credit cards that allow you to spin up one time use numbers you don’t even really have to worry so much about a small businesses card handling operation getting hacked which is nice.
Not having a central point of failure for your checking account is a boon these days I think.
You often can't even find the best gear at the big box retail stores. Small companies like Gossamer Gear, Tarptent, etc. make some seriously fantastic outdoor gear. You can't find them without some looking, but it's totally worth it.
Yeah. And in the mountainous areas there's usually a good retailer nearby the local REI flagship. Seattle has like 3 or 4 that I can think of off the top of my head.
I will say that when I went to the local REI here the lady I worked with actually spent about an hour with me fitting a pair of backpacking boots and explaining how and why some of the boots would fail when I wore them. I learned more about my feet from her than from any of the other places I went.
You can get that kind of experience at a lot of the boutique alpine or backpacking stores though.
In the US, having a local REI is pretty close to the only good option. Or Cabela's for some types of gear; they're geared towards hunting/fishing. There are a few other local alternatives with various degrees and types of specialization. But not a lot--and they all tend to pivot more and more towards general clothing over time.
As for repairs, good luck. I took something into an REI recently to get repaired as I had done in the past and it was: "Nope. Don't do repairs any longer. Send it to a place in (somewhat ironically) Seattle."
Outdoor gear is an especially good way to shift your purchasing from online to supporting local retailers, specifically because their pricing is very competitive. Backcountry.com pricing isn't saving me any money vs my local gear stores.
The only problem is actually finding a good outdoor gear store - i'm lucky enough to live in a mountain resort town, so my options are pretty good, but many places simply don't have a local shop.
I can relate to that, I did live in a mountain town with some great local stores. However, I just moved to a larger city but further from the mountains and they have worse local options, at least that I have found.
I honestly tried to shop at Dick's, about a decade ago. (I have spent lots of money at e.g. REI [although I haven't lived near one recently] and Bass Pro in the past .) At Dick's, if I ever had a particular item in mind or a question about an item they did sell, whether that was for hunting, cycling, kayaking/canoeing, snowboarding, skating, whatever: I was always disappointed. So far as I can tell it exists mostly to sell high-marketing-spend branded athleisure apparel. Their recent public stand against 2A and the resulting drop in sales would fit with that...
My time, honestly. It takes a lot more time to stop by at a store and find what I'm looking for or pick up a package from customer service than to simply have it delivered to me with 2-day shipping.
I'm not sure why Walmart gets so much hate. They're not the most altruistic company in the world, but I don't remember ever hearing about them suing small companies for trademark BS like this. In fact, I can't recall ever hearing anything really awful about them, other than maybe staff being underpaid.
Compared to really despicable actions I've heard of from so many other behemoth companies, Walmart seems to be relatively benign. Some people complain about them putting small businesses out of business when they open up, but what do you expect when a large retailer opens up nearby and has a big economy-of-scale advantage? My main problem with them is that they tend to have a lot of cheap junk, and not a lot of better stuff, but what do you expect from a retailer that caters to the crowd that wants stuff as cheaply as possible? They also have kinda crappy, dirty stores many times, but again, look at their clientele. So I usually go to Target for that kind of shopping instead, and to Wegman's for other groceries that Target doesn't carry.
> They also have kinda crappy, dirty stores many times, but again, look at their clientele.
The shopping experience at Walmart is really only unpleasant in areas where the "Walmart is gross" meme has pervaded the local psyche enough to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. It probably doesn't help that local governments in such areas do everything they can to deny Walmart's permits and keep them relegated to "not in my backyard".
In most places, Walmart isn't any worse than any other major department store, and shopping there is near-universal. You're more likely to have an incident with another shopper at a place like Target simply because the shopper base that actively selects against Walmart in non-Walmart-hostile areas is much snootier.
This is just plain wrong. Not to far from where I live, there's a Walmart and a Target in the same shopping center. There's a huge, clear difference in shopping between the two. The clientele at Target is clearly more affluent, the store is cleaner and nicer, the carts are nicer and roll silently unlike the beat-up squeaky Walmart ones, I could go on and on. It has nothing to do with "permits" or NIMBY when the two stores are almost right next to each other. I've seen this in other places as well where Walmart and Target were not very far apart.
As for "incidents" with shoppers, I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
Appreciate the counter-anecdote. There is definitely some individual variance between locations depending on local management, overall demographic factors, etc. It wasn't my intention to suggest that every Walmart and every Target are always equally desirable shopping experiences. The main idea is that except in places where Walmart is specifically artificially constrained, it's just as likely to have a bad store or a good store as the next massive conglomerate. :)
Look into WalMart's operations in Mexico, where they've bribed officials into deliberately overlooking protective legislation for historical areas, just so they could get visible placement of stores to catch tourists.
Amongst many other not just questionable but reprehensible moves behind the scenes in many, many places. If they can find a way around the system, they will, and go beyond to bribe people into staying quiet about it.
Even after hearing how bad Amazon's fulfillment centers grind people down, I'd still buy from them before giving WalMart anything.
They're well known for abusing their monopsony power to force brands to offshore production and reduce quality of products.
First they take on a product line and become a big % of the company's sales, then they start tightening the screws and demanding price cuts. The manufacturer has to either give up a large fraction of their total sales or use cost-cutting measures like offshoring and materials substitution to reduce their cost so they can sell at the price Wal-Mart demands. Wal-Mart does this incrementally over time so the company has already started down the road by the time they realize what's being done.
This was a big part of the manufacturing offshoring movement of the last few decades. Of course one company isn't solely responsible for that trend, but Wal-Mart with their huge size was a significant part of it. This was before Amazon was a thing. Now the damage is done and everyone seems to be forgetting that Wal-Mart had a hand in it.
This isn't anything new with Walmart, and it's pretty obvious that's going to happen if one retailer becomes your main customer. Walmart isn't forcing anyone to sell through them, or even to have different product lines (one crappy one for Walmart, another for other retailers), or even different brands. Basically, if you want to sell stuff to Walmart buyers, this is what you need to agree to. If you want to be a higher-end company, then don't deal with Walmart.
Well, economies of scale and significant pressure on suppliers ("Do you want your product in the largest retailer in the world?") to reduce prices, even at the cost of quality. I've noticed many of their high-volume products are lower quality than the same brands at other shops.
If a company does not make a consistent best-faith effort to defend its trademark(s), the claim on those trademark(s) get severely weakened. Companies are thus legally incentivized to defend their trademark (at least in the U.S.). This is a rational decision that has nothing to do with being an asshole (or not). If a company does not have a consistent track record of defending its trademark(s), then their claim gets severely weakened from a legal standpoint. Period, end of story.
And yet, every month there is a story like this in the news of "big company with generic name sues small company with same name" because nobody likes a bully. The problem is, if they DO NOT attack, the trademark claim will become severely diluted and then THEY will become vulnerable to a trademark dispute from someone else down the line, and the other party will point to their lack of historical defense and make an argument that the claim on the trademark is weak.
You're only incentivized not to unreasonably postpone a legal claim. Here, the company seems to exaggerate what a reasonable claim is in the first place.
Think what you may, but if there is ever a time to use the phrase that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet its now. Its being handled correctly, and not displayed honestly.
We will be releasing a statement today or tomorrow regarding the issue. We haven’t said anything due to confidentiality agreements, that other parties violated but anyways. I respect your opinion and decision.
Let me know what I can help with gear-wise in the meantime,
>They're not required to choose a word already ubiquitous in their industry and trademark it.
That has nothing whatsoever to do with the comment you replied to.
>They're taking "defense" to a ridiculous, douchy extreme.
Unless they did not send letters prior to filing their cases (of which I am unaware and the article did not mention), then everything mentioned is neither ridiculous nor douchey except as far as trademark law in business always is. If the term actually does not indicate to consumers what company manufactured it due to its common usage, all that needs to happen is one of the challenged companies put up a defense claiming genericization or lack of validity of the original trademark (that one is probably more suitable in this case) and a court will decide if that's so. With trademark, as a company you do not get a choice.
If they choose not to fight a small business using the name, that is a 100% legitimate defense for Walmart to use when they release Walmart Backcountry Skis that have nothing whatsoever to do with Backcountry.com.
The EFF article provided by another commenter does not 'debunk' anything. We're not talking about a company suing people for talking about the company. We're talking about a company suing other companies for promoting products in the exact same space with the trademarked name. This is what trademark law was kind of created for in the first place. If you can convince a court that if you walked into a Walmart and saw Walmart Backcountry Skis on sale that it would never cross the mind of either you or any other consumers that the Backcountry company might have been involved in their production, that is your defense and the trademark will be nullified and the lawsuit will be won.
Except that Backcountry.com is suing companies far outside their space, like coffee producers.
And Walmart should be able to sell “Walmart Backcountry Skis” because backcountry skis are a subtype of skis like alpine skis or cross country skis. Backcountry.com did not create the friggin product space or popularize the term “backcountry.” It’s a generic blanket term that refers to an entire range of activities.
I'm gonna go ahead and just disagree with every premise in your comment. "Backcountry skis" are a thing, independent of any brand. This is like if I started a knife company and called it Pocket(TM). I wouldn't want WalMart to start selling "pocket knives", or else I might lose my trademark, huh.
I was not aware of this at all. How did Backcountry get the trademark in the first place? It should definitely fail on the first challenge if backcountry is literally a subtype of ski and pre-existed. I know nothing about skis, and all the comments here and in the article made it sound like the furor was all over the generic adjective of 'backcountry' which I took to just be a synonym for 'rustic'.
The reason it doesn't fail on the first challenge is in the article and it's the same as patent trolls: most of the companies they've gone after can't afford the legal fees, so they simply roll over a lot faster than Philips did. By the time they get to Philips they have years of success getting other companies to, on paper at least, agree with them. Don't know if that strengthens their case in reality, but the fact is Philips sounds the first one to have put up a real fight. It's still a bullshit judicial decision, though.
The argument that they have to do this to defend their trademark also falls apart when you remember why they haven't sued Kohlberg & Co: their trademark was already in use. And by a supplier, no less.
Correct. This article reads like someone who has no knowledge of, or familiarity with, trademark law. Trademarks have to be defended or they are lost, and additionally almost all trademarks are applied to a very broad list of things just as standard practice. Even if your company is only making T-shirts, for instance, it would be very common to also have your trademarks cover toys, dishes, tools, and all kinds of other products just in case you might want to plaster your trademark on those in the future.
That being said, the fundamental purpose of trademarks is to eliminate consumer confusion. In order to defend against a challenge, you would need to present to the court strong evidence that there is very little chance a consumer might be confused as to the maker or origin of the goods due to the name. For instance, if you made a line of frozen pizzas and called them 'backcountry style' pizzas, is there a chance that some consumers might think those pizzas were made by Backcountry.com? You've got to be able to show that this is not a likely scenario even if Backcountry.com starts manufacturing frozen foods (assuming the trademark covers frozen foods, I have no idea if it does, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did).
I developed a website for reserving parking near airports and seaports years ago and the site launched under the name BookParkFly.com. Shortly thereafter, the business (I was just a contracted web developer) received a letter from a lawyer representing the people who owned a sorta-similar trademark in the same space for a company called, if I remember correctly, Park 'N Fly. I personally thought we might have been able to win a challenge in court, but the company didn't want to fight it so changed the name and rebranded everything. (It's Book2Park now if you're curious, but I severed ties with them years ago. Before they were featured on Krebs after getting someone else to slap in an insecure Wordpress blog after I told them if Wordpress was going to be used it had to be watched closely for security concerns...)
Trademark challenges aren't "bullying" or "aggressive". They're basic law 101 and really shouldn't surprise anyone in business. That's why you pay an attorney to do a trademark search if you really want to use a certain name.
A... "rep"... is a company... "rep"resentative. I don't imagine the GP is saying he's going to call the rep nasty names, but it's good to let them know why he's taking his business elsewhere.
Of course not man, from my experience the rank and file at BC are fantastic people. They of course have nothing to do with this. But when I and others tell our gearheads "the faucet is getting turned off" it will (hopefully) develop momentum internally against what's happening.
Or not. There are lots of other players in this space.
Yup, I buy my snowsports gear pretty much exclusively from evo. I love going to the B&M store here in Denver, even though it gets disgustingly crowded sometimes I have never had a bad experience there. Plus their prices are competitive, or at least competitive enough that I don't bother shopping around at this point because I like the service so much.
We're seeing this all over. Even on small scales - my wife just had many of her listings taken down on etsy because a patent troll claimed she owned an entire genre of crafts. This isn't the place to get into details, though, because my instance isn't the problem. Even the people doing the bullying, and etsy letting them get away with it, aren't the full problem. The court system is a bigger part, because many claims have no merit, but people know that not everyone can afford to go through the legal procedures to get that answer declared by a court. We've gotten to a point that you have to have money to fight some battles. Which means sometimes bullies win because others can't afford the fight. And setting up GoFundMe accounts every time someone gets bullied isn't scalable.
We need this to be resolved at a cultural, societal, and/or legislative level.
These abuses are a consequence of "money is free speech" and other court decisions which have moved the US towards one-dollar-one-vote rather than one-individual-one-vote.
hint for those as confused as I was: parent means James McGill Buchanan, who won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. A recent biography has suggested he had a political influence far in excess of what has been reported in the papers.
It's one thing to sue over similar names—I can see a case that people might have misconceptions over products. Saying you own the rights to a color is ridiculous. T-Mobile and Lemonade are in different industries.
I'm OK with that, to a point, within a narrow scope. If you go to grab a chocolate bar off a shelf, you want reasonable assurance that it's what you think you're getting, and not Re-Sees Peanut Butter Caps. Trademarks were an early form of consumer protection.
There is a fundamental equivalence between numbers and other concepts. Any concept can be mapped to any particular number based on the method of encoding chosen.
Intellectual property is saying that I own this particular result of turning a number into usable output regardless of starting number.
This is to say that we can't tell without actually decoding the number so we are in fact asserting that there is a chance we own any and all numbers if someone later publishes the encoding that would turn your number into a picture of a cartoon mouse.
There is a fundamental equivalence between unique pictures of a cartoon mice and automobiles. Any automobile can be mapped to any particular unique cartoon mouse picture based on the method of encoding chosen.
Automobile ownership is saying that I own this particular result of turning a unique cartoon mouse picture into usable car regardless of starting cartoon mouse picture.
This is to say that we can't tell without actually decoding the cartoon mouse picture so we are in fact asserting that there is a chance we own any and all cartoon mouse pictures if someone later publishes the encoding that would turn your cartoon mouse picture into an automobile.
It's interesting, and I hope worth spreading in Germany where the laws on this exist, that a company can lay claim to a color and enforce that against other companies who are not competing in the same industry.
I hope that with the proliferation of TLDs this happens often enough that people get sick of it and we start enforcing the rule that generic words like mountain and road can't be trademarked. I'd prefer nothing, including Apple, get grandfathered in. Apple can go back to being Apple Computer or apple.com, whichever they prefer. I'd like the startup community to insist that startups like remote.com keep the .com in their name. Some companies, like hotels.com / hoteles.com still get it :)
What constitutes a generic term? Could I use Rottweiler as a trademarked brand? What about Dog or Canine? What if I combined “generic” terms like DogHead?
I think this proposal is too obtuse. These cases bother us because the man who founded Backcountry Denim was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have intended to encroach on the “backcountry.com” brand, nor was it proven that he failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid doing so. If that is the fair and just way to rule on these cases then that should be made to be the way that the judiciary rules. Proof of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt may not be exactly the right burden of proof in this case but the point stands that changing how the judges rule would solve more problems than arguing the semantics of the term “generic”.
In the UK, a trademark has to be associated with a specific product category. A business that isn’t Apple Inc., could set up as “Apple T-shirts” or “Apple Foods” or “Apple Taxis”.
You can’t have exclusive use of the name
Rottweiler for selling Rottweilers. However, you could register Rottweiler as a trademark for other goods or services. Where the mark isn’t the generic name for the goods, it’s usually an arbitrary or suggestive mark. Or if it’s a made-up word, it’s called fanciful. Your example DogHead would be a fanciful mark.
In short, the mark is always considered in connection with the goods and services with which it is used.
Well, this case also has a nasty smell because Backcountry.com is, having recently launched a new product, just now is deciding that a bunch of existing businesses encroach on its trademark. (And possibly "picking on" smaller businesses, who are likely to have a much lower level of legal resourcing, but that's not completely clear.)
Trademark defense is one thing if you're proactive about it -- and as I understand it this is even a legal requirement for keeping the mark. Attacking another longstanding business because you've changed your business plan is, well, at least mildly sociopathic.
> If you can't copyright it then you shouldn't be able to trademark it.
Copyrights and trademarks aren't comparable in that way; they cover different things. I can't copyright the word "DogHead" or even the phrase "DogHead Software". I can trademark "DogHead Software," and I can copyright works produced under the DogHead Software brand name.
In fact, you could trademark "Rottweiler," especially if you trademarked in conjunction with another word that made it distinctive, e.g. the actual trademarks I've found for "Rottweiler Recordz" (a recording studio) or "Rottweiler Performance" (a motorcycle parts company). Trademarks have to identify specific uses: there's a trademark pending for "Rottweiler" for use for shoe brushes, and the goods and services claimed cover a variety of cleaning brushes. Even if they get the trademark, it doesn't overlap "Rottweiler Performance," and I could file a separate trademark for "Rottweiler" as a beer company.
With respect to "Backcountry," the biggest arguments against the trademark are (a) that "Backcountry" should be considered a "generic mark" (e.g., you can't name your escalator company "Escalator (tm)", and (b) even if Backcountry isn't sufficiently generic to fail that test, Backcountry.com is making too broad a use claim.
They also quietly share/sell your personal info to third parties (along with customer info from subsidiaries CompetitiveCyclist.com, Motosport.com, and SteepandCheap.com). From https://www.backcountry.com/sc/privacy-policy:
“We may share information about you as follows or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy:
- With third parties for their direct marketing purposes.”
At least as described in the “privacy” policy, this can include purchase history, device, geo location, and more, though just name and address would be bad enough.
Also for the purpose of lawsuits against their customers.
"In September, the website went after David Ollila, a serial entrepreneur who in 2010 created a short ski for climbing snowy hills he called the Marquette Backcountry Ski...Backcountry.com argued that Ollila knew he was intentionally abusing the Backcountry.com mark because he had ordered products from the website in 2002 and 2010."
Backcountry is descriptive, which makes it a weak trademark. One defendant tried to claim they were in a different category. Why not claim the word is descriptive and argue to invalidate their use of the mark.
"The term ‘backcountry’ is widely used by retailers and consumers to describe products and services to be used in remote, sparsely inhabited, rural areas,” Branch wrote in his counterclaim petition for cancellation, calling backcountry a “generic” term."
It's probably much easier to just say "oh that doesn't apply to us because we're in a different category" than to fight the validity of it in the first place.
Trademarks are granted in specific categories. Wendy's restaurant can have a trademark on "Wendy's" (the rendering of the name in a specific font, the pigtailed girl logo - these are different trademarks than the word mark using "Wendy's"), and Wendy's craft supplies can also have a trademark. Pretty straightforward defense when the hamburger company gets annoying; hard to argue that pins-and-needles can be confused with hamburgers.
But I see your point. I do wonder if any of these defendants have added 'the term is descriptive, and therefore indefensible' to their defense.
Trademarks are granted in specific categories for instance there are at least three large companies using the name delta, airline, electronics, and faucet company.
I contacted EFF about this yesterday and got this response: “Thanks for reaching out to us at the EFF and for making us aware of this issue. I'll share this with the team that works on trademark issues, but in the event you know or speak with anyone being targeted by backcountry.com, please do have them reach out to us!“
I’ve been on the receiving end of one of these. I used to run the snowboarding blog bckcntry.com and was given an ultimatum by backcountry.com, either take down the blog entirely, or advertise solely for backcountry.com and receive affiliate commissions. I chose the latter.
My personal experience has been that a generic phrase in common use cannot be used as a trademark. There has to be something added to it to make it unique. I wonder how they obtained the trademark in the first place?
You can register a trademark for a generic term if it is tied to a very specific category. It is what allows "Apple" to be trademarked when related to computers. The problem here is that "Backcountry" is a term that is too closely tied to what they are actually selling. It would be like allowing a phone company to trademark the term "Cell"
Generally speaking you can file a trademark for whatever you want; you just have to show it is being actively used in the way you say it is being used.
That doesn’t mean the trademark will hold up under a challenge. But a challenge takes time and money, and a recurring theme in this story (and many like it) is that one party is way bigger and richer than the other. For a small business, it’s generally going to be way cheaper to just change their name than to take on a federal court case against a national company backed by private equity—even if they think they would win.
This is absolutely why we need a "loser pays" civil court system: interested attorneys should be able to volunteer to take on the case on behalf of the small business, with an agreement with their client that they only get paid if they win. Then when they do, they charge the big corporation an absolutely enormous amount of money in legal fees, which the big company is required to pay.
A system like this would keep frivolous lawsuits to a minimum.
I like this idea until I try honestly to defend myself and fail, and the company says "ok we would like our $10k judgement and $10M legal fees paid today please."
So maybe it should be automatic that when a huge company sues a small company and loses, the small company gets all its legal fees paid plus a big payout for their time being wasted.
And maybe it should be different if small companies sue huge ones (e.g., patent trolls), or if small companies sue each other.
As I said, I have personal experience with this - the product we were trying to register had sold with that name in the past, but the PTO rejected our application. We never got to the point where a challenge could be made. We resubmitted a new name that had many more qualifiers added, and that one was accepted.
It's just as well, because Microsoft came out with something shortly after that had the same name. Definitely not someone you want to do battle with.
well we had a recent discussion here about basecamp having to run ads to insure their name was top of a search listing. to me their name was more generic than this one. that is the problem with having a corporate name that already has been used in literature if not common discussion. if the name you want is already a reference to what you want to do or what you want to associate with your not really establishing a brand your merely exploiting an existing situation.
google became the term after the name gained popularity, base camp, back country, and such, were terms of activities or places long before someone decided it was a brand.
* edit : the two that stick out in my mind as brands establishing association with the product regardless of who made it would be xerox and Kleenex. In some parts of the world Coke is synonymous with soda.
I don't believe their problem was that terms related to the previous definition of base camp were appearing above them, but that their competitors were appearing above. They were indexed well, but you can pay to be above your competitor when the user is searching for them.
IANAL. But my understanding is that's the case in general. There are apparently some exceptions where a phrase/word has carved out a distinct meaning in the context of a specific company [1] but that wouldn't seem to be the case here.
TBH I'd never heard of "a facebook" (that is a thing, right? I think I learned that at some point from stories about Facebook, and your comment implies it) and even trying to search for "what is a facebook" at this point on Google yields nothing other than Facebook. It certainly wasn't a common term in the Pacific Northwest, where I'm from.
Compare that to "what is backcountry" and I think you'll see the difference.
Same, I had never heard of “a facebook” until the site existed. It’s... something fraternities at rich-ass colleges like the one Zuck went to do/did? Where they collect photographs of their fellow students and accumulate their contact info, vital data, and hotness ratings? I went to college in the eighties and never heard the term.
It's like the yearbook that high schools publish at the end of the year, but colleges published and distributed facebooks near the beginning of the year, so students could get to know their fellow students and promote a sense of... collegiality.
I remember seeing a printed one in 1995. It was an official college of arts and sciences publication, so did not include any hotness ratings or non-academic vital data. Basically names, photos, undergraduate year of study, and majors.
They moved to departmental websites during and after that time, which is how Zuckerberg was able to scrape names and photos for his own skeezy little project.
Sounds like some kind of term that was only known within certain circles, and maybe only at certain colleges. I was in college at that time, and I also never heard the word "facebook" until that company became large enough to be nationally known as the alternative to MySpace.
I think it was more common in smaller populations, either a small school or a unit within a school like a greek organization. Ohio State with 50K students at 10x10 photos per page would yield a 500 page book, and a pointless one at that.
Most places, yes. It's even printed on the cover. The word "facebook" was probably exclusive to East Coast US, from DC to Boston. I didn't even know it was a "facebook" until a local called it that.
thefacebook.com was a private re-implementation of Harvard's "online face books", which were a digital ports of the paper "face book" that had been distributed at Harvard for decades prior to the creation of the website.
In case anyone is considering downvoting this response, check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book
Apparently "face book" was a concept/generic phrase in common use before Facebook was a thing.
Guys, with the exception of safety and climbing equipment, buy all your outdoor equipment used, ideally on the local market. Reduce landfill and save money. Most of the stuff you buy is crap made in China anyway.
That's weird because I find a ton of stuff at REI's Garage Sales and on eBay. A little elbow grease, a light dusting of hydrophobic spray, maybe a little patching here and there... and my stuff works great!
My wife & I have somewhat variable success with this method. You can find killer deals if you are an unusual size. But if you're a Medium in men's or a size 6 in women's, good luck finding anything. Perhaps a little counter-intuitively, the most common sizes are picked clean first.
I wish there was a bullycompanies.com website that listed every bully company, like backcountry.com, with links to their bullying tactics. Then I could quickly check the list before making a purchase.
Such a website would likely be a bully itself, so the list of links to specific instances of bullying should include its list of bullyings. Use of infinite scroll would appropriate here.
The cost in time alone of answering legal calls from the companies listed would make such a site untenable if run properly. And if not run properly it would be so rife with fake information (from disgruntles customers going too far, people trying to blackmail companies with the threat of bad reviews, and competitors crossing the line) so as to be of no real use.
I'm was not thinking of a yelp type of website where people can post whatever they want. I was thinking that all of the links would go to articles written by reputable journalists and newspapers.
Agreed. I would see it as a listing of companies with appropriate citations for the claims as to steer clear of defamation. However, you are still going to be dealing with constant C&D's as a result of the content, regardless of its merit.
As a Denverite I was pleasantly surprised to see the Sun on HN. I did sort of wonder why Backcountry Delicatessen suddenly changed their name to Yampa (yuck) last year, and the article acknowledges the change states the owner was never contacted by backcountry.com. So at least they didn’t cause that monstrosity.
Still, I think I’ve ordered things from them before, but never again.
I buy lots of custom water bottles from specialized, for our bike business. I sent an email to our rep saying we had a philosophical disagreement with their actions, and would stop using them. They received enough backlash which filtered up to management, apologized, and stopped. It was an effective use of boycott.
what's weird, is that Roubaix is actually an extremely poor town that would probably greatly benefit from the money the lawyers get from those lawsuits (and it's probably small enough that it would make a difference).
That's because you're doing something that directly competes with an existing trademarked product. Windows is a computer operating system, so of course you can't make another computer operating system and call it "Windows".
However, if you want to make some breakfast cereal called "Windows bran flakes", you're absolutely allowed to do that under trademark law, because it has zero to do with computer operating systems. Just make sure the box doesn't look like Windows 10, or the Microsoft/Windows logos, or anything like that.
What we're seeing here is total overreach. "Backcountry" is a common word that's been around for centuries. So yeah, it would certainly be wrong for someone to start an online retail business selling outdoor stuff and call it "backcountry-equipper.com" or something like that. But they're suing people who are doing totally different stuff, like making jeans, not people operating online retailers of various outdoor equipment.
The point could be that window in Windows means an area of the screen dedicated for an application to display output and receive input from the user, and such meaning is generic for operating systems.
> As early as 2002, a court rejected Microsoft's claims, stating that Microsoft had used the term "windows" to describe graphical user interfaces before the product, Windows, was ever released, and the windowing technique had already been implemented by Xerox and Apple many years before. Microsoft kept seeking retrial, but in February 2004, a judge rejected two of Microsoft's central claims. The judge denied Microsoft's request for a preliminary injunction and raised "serious questions" about Microsoft's trademark. Microsoft feared a court may define "Windows" as generic and result in the loss of its status as a trademark.
Microsoft settled the lawsuit they filed by buying the name "Lindows" for $20M.
Many brands are existing words. You don't even need to look at edge cases to support this:
* Apple
* Amazon
* Nike
* Oracle
* Visa
* Fox
....
The point of trademarks is to protect consumers from misleadingly identified products. Whether the word is used for something else is irrelevant. Basically all western countries take into account the context in which the term is used. i.e. your grocery store can still legally sell a fruit called 'apple'.
Well Utah is also the place where SCO Group was (is?); this was the company that tried to claim they owned Linux and insisted on selling licenses to it and suing companies that used Linux without buying one.
It's not a unique spelling. It is the word "cool" in German. Many companies use it because of this. Similar story to Backcountry. Using a generic word and trademarking it and thinking they own it. This is hypocritical as the mission statement for the outside community as they all opt for public access, shared access, and community except when it affects their wallets.
But are they really based in Utah, or just have their paperwork on file there because it made the most sense to file there? I was given the several options including Utah and Delaware as a place to file my company. Not sure what the implication you're making is.
No, they are utah based. Utah has a very specific mindset. Its neither better not worse, but distinct from the nation, and neighboring states, in a way hard to pin down. Yes, tons of mormons play a large factor, but does not encompass the whole distinction. Not every implication is nuanced or implying something large, often we just see something is going on beyond the normal noise.
I wanted to reply and add on to this, but you're already getting downvoted. Utah is a very strange place to do business, I'd almost argue it as sort of isolationist with a love for lawyers, so this makes complete sense.
What exactly is the motivation for Backcountry.com to invest the time and money in doing this? None of the tiny companies and groups they're going after would cause confusion to customers. Nor is that the intent of the other businesses. So what's the point?
I imagine they have retained a law firm for trademark issues, and the law firm is making busywork for itself so it can get paid. And there's some salesperson at the firm who has convinced Backcountry.com management that "you have to do this to defend your trademark" or whatever.
Backcountry.com's motivation seems to be that they've started to sell "Backcountry"-branded goods, and they're trying to claim trademark protection for that usage. Here's some more detail:
- Currently, Backcountry.com owns a trademark to the word "Backcountry", but only for retail services. So if you tried to open an on-line store called "Bakckountry.com", say, they'd have a strong case against you.
- However, Backcountry.com is now expanding into sales of Backcountry-branded clothing and outdoor equipment. Their existing trademark doesn't extend to this usage, so in 2018 they applied for an additional trademark covering a wide range of outdoor goods.
- The US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected that application on the grounds that "backcountry" is a generic, descriptive term. USPTO also mentioned the likelihood of confusion with an existing trademark held by Snapperhead Inventions for the Marquette Backcountry Ski.
- Backcountry.com then applied to USPTO to cancel Snapperhead's trademark. USPTO rejected that application.
- Backcountry.com has now filed civil suit in California in an attempt to force Snapperhead to give up their trademark.
In summary, this is hardly seems to be a case of Backcountry.com protecting its existing trademark. Rather, Backcountry.com is pressuring other firms with similar trademarks of their own to give them up so that Backcountry.com can expand its trademark rights.
Donated to the GoFundMe page, because as a small business owner, this kind of abuse of our copyright and patent systems really tees me off.
I could not ever spend a cent with backcountry.com now, because to me their brand means bullying and abuse.
That's a false dichotomy: it's both. "Business" doesn't have to mean "bullying". They're choosing to act that way, even though nothing's making them.
Also, burn that crappy trademark to the ground. If I tried to make an inflatable raft company named "River", they should laugh me out of the trademark office.
I won't forget; I've looked at them before when comparison shopping certain more-expensive items at REI.
I'll just use REI now; they don't seem to sue people (plus, REI isn't a common word anyway), they have a fantastic return policy I've used a couple times now, and I get 10% back for being a member, plus various coupons throughout the year.
I always confused backcountry.com with The Back Country, a cool shop in Truckee (https://thebackcountry.net/). I wonder if The Back Country is old enough to predate the trademark, or they are about to get sued.
Why aren't things like this just addressed promptly and quickly by some legislative body. Its dumb to allow trademarking of common words and descriptive terms, can't we just have it legislated already?
How can consumers be confused by that word. If I'm searching google for backcountry gear, I am not searching for backcountry.com's brand. I'm searching for backcountry gear. There's no other way to say it. This is nonsense. It actually harms all other seller of that category. Allowing trademark of that word makes no sense.
Unless I'm missing something and backcountry.com literally coined the term and is responsible for its inclusion in the dictionary.
The rise of 'backcountry' into prominence roughly corresponded with the rise of Backcountry as a retailer.
In 2006, ski touring was called 'randonee' as often as it was called 'backcountry' (even moreso in prior years). Similarly, off-trail/rugged hiking was in the wilderness, not the backcountry, prior to the mid/late 2000s.
I'm not sure how germane that is in this case, as I understand Backcountry has only filed for the trademark recently.
I don't think the founding spirit of the company is in line with the current legal strategy -- Backcountry may feel that they must aggressively defend the trademark in order to have any sort of trademark. As an online retailer, a trademark seems sensible (a competitor named Backcountry.net seems uncouth). Suing Marquette Backcountry Skis is utterly inappropriate and absolutely out of line for the corporate culture I associate with Backcountry.com.
We called it backcountry skiing in the mid-90s. It was a common name. Euros probably called it randonnee. But out in Lake Tahoe, California, we called it playing in the backcountry, sometimes with touring, etc. Backcountry.com definitely didn't create the word.
I moved to Colorado in the early 90’s and backcountry was already a super common term. It certainly predates these guys.
I have no idea what this guy is talking about. I’ve never heard the term randonee until today, and at least in Colorado the term wilderness has always had a very specific jargon type meaning as referring to designated wilderness areas, like the Big Blue Wilderness, for example. The term is clearly defined by the US Forest Service.
I definitely didn't intend to argue that Backcountry.com had created the word, only that my recollection was that the common usage of the term in the context of ski touring was roughly correlated.
I just checked the earliest (2001) Internet Archive record for Turns-All-Year.com, and it also includes the word 'backcountry', so I'll stand corrected.
I guess you already know it, but in case you don't, shining a bit of light on ignorance never hurts: We have 24 official languages in Europe, in reality more than 200 distinct ones.
Randonee, or most probably 'ski randonee' is french term for ski touring and its variants (randonee itself means rather hiking). No other language here uses this term, we have our own phrases for this beautiful, but sometimes dangerous activity. Other variant would be 'ski alpinism', but that's for more hardcore technical stuff (crampons, ice axes, harness, ropes, skis on the backpack type of experiences in very steep places)
I suspect the causal direction is that there was an increase in the outdoor recreation "industry" around that time which, among other things, drove an increase in the "backcountry" term. Making that word an obvious (if not SEO optimized because people weren't thinking in those terms in 1996) choice for a new-fangled e-commerce site thingie catering to that market.
>The rise of 'backcountry' into prominence roughly corresponded with the rise of Backcountry as a retailer. In 2006, ski touring was called 'randonee' as often as it was called 'backcountry'
'Backcountry' to describe non-resort skiing/boarding has been in use since at least the early 90's. Probably earlier. I've literally never heard anyone say the word 'randonee' in North America. Not once.
Source: I worked in the industry for more than two and a half decades.
Your timeline is not correct. "Touring" as a replacement for Randonee did happen around then (in the US anyway) but the term backcountry to denote any terrain outside of normal ski area boundaries and the practice of skiing such terrain has been along at least since the 80's and I'd imagine much longer.
That's my recollection as well although I can't prove it--and that's too long ago for Google Trends to be useful. In the US at least randonee also has a meaning distinct from backcountry cross country skiing in terms of equipment. I'm pretty sure I remember the outdoor group I'm a member of having backcountry (i.e. non-groomed trail) cross country skiing workshops going back to at least the 1990s.
I was actively ski touring beginning in 2006 and voraciously consuming every form of literature, book, and online content I could on the subject. In my recollection, it was far more common to call a Dynafit Comfort ski binding either a ski-touring binding or a randonee binding than it was to call it a backcountry-ski binding.
This might just be a regional thing. In the Pacific NW where I was skiing ~100 days/year in my teens and early 20s in the 90s, "Backcountry" was the term used to describe any skiing out of ski area boundaries. Touring or Randonee, where you skin uphill and then lock your heels to ski down, inbounds or out of bounds, were called Randonee and weren't particularly associated with the term Backcountry at all except that is typically where you would go to do Randonee.
To me, whether suing for trademark infringement is ethically supportable or not comes down to the purpose of trademarks: to prevent consumer confusion (consumers thinking they're buying the product of one company when they're actually buying the product of another company).
If a company is suing for trademark infringement, but there isn't any reasonable chance that consumers will be confused, then the lawsuit isn't legitimate -- it's just plain old bullying.
Another avid outdoorsperson here. The industry is full of good people and great brands - we don’t have to put up with this. I’m done with them, even if they apologize.
One of their gearheads messaged me in one of the regular marketing emails. I told him I could not do business with them due to their lawsuits. You should email them too.
Backcountry is a place not a trade-marketable name. Owning the word 'backcountry' is strictly against the outdoor ethos.
If they wanted a company name they could trade mark then they should have selected a different name.
I've always had good service/support from Backcountry, but today I emailed my account manager and let them know that I was disappointed in their recent actions and that it is a factor in future purchases. Hopefully if enough of us let them know we disagree with their actions, they'll change tune.
I spend so much money on Backcountry.com, I get personal emails from a "gearhead" (a rep assigned to me). I have sent him a (very polite) email asking to inform the corporate that I will be suspending my spending until this is resolved.
They are suing people with registered trademarks that use the word Backcountry? How’s that supposed to work? Perhaps the trademark owners should be suing Backcountry.com!
The land is great, the people are fairly good. It's the system that holds us back. That doesn't mean the government, although there are aspects of the government that should be disbanded immediately (hi CIA/NSA!). Mostly we need to put up with a lot less authority, including in this case that of the trademark courts.
Years ago I tried buying some ski skins for a buddy as a gift. Somehow the box arrived without all the parts (and there isn't much to ski skins, so this was dumbfounding). Took multiple phone calls and emails with support, where they seemed at a loss of what to do (I dunno - replace the item / do a return, duh?). Think I finally got my money back and bought them at REI. Love their little goat icon, but otherwise soured me from buying from them.
From what I understand the nature of trademark law is that if you don't defend your trademark, you lose it. It's not nice, but what are they supposed to do? Abandon their trademark?
That’s an oft repeated myth, but it’s not quite true, certainly not as broadly as stated.
From an article by the EFF:
> The circumstances under which a company could actually lose a trademark—such as abandonment and genericide—are quite limited. Genericide […] is very rare […]. Courts also set a very high bar to show abandonment (usually years of total non-use). Importantly, failure to enforce a mark against every potential infringer does not show abandonment.
They are supposed to do an existing brands search--which starts with the no-cost-to-the-user registered trademark search provided by the USPTO--before consciously designing a defensible mark.
That means no one in your category or nearby categories is already using it, and it isn't already a one-word generic term.
A term like "backcountry outfitters" is more defensible together than either word alone, but still isn't very good, because it describes a lot of existing business. Selecting just "backcountry"--a dictionary word--as your whole trademark is pure madness. It's analogous to claiming "zymurgy" as your trademark and sending C&D letters to every micro-brewery in the US, ordering them to stop using the plain dictionary term for what they do when describing what they do.
Examples of defensible trademarks would be "Goatsbeard Gear", "Spelunkatorium", "Voyageur's Choice", "Trailhead Traders", "Avalanchador", "Rockspider", "Backwild Country", "The Hinterlandery", "Boondock Swamp Charters".
The point is generating a unique, distinct, memorable, and non-confusing term.
Not to sound troll-y but yes, maybe. What if they had an actual unique name? What if instead of paying lawyers they were serving their customers?
They have trademarked a VERY common word. Now they're distracted by "defending" it. If that one word is all that stands between success and failure they're doing it all wrong.
So why is this not an article angry at the USPTO for granting overly broad trademarks?
Of course companies are going to try to overreach and get as much as they can. The point of having a government is to regulate and turn down unreasonable requests. That's where this needs to be fixed, not by expecting profit driven companies to altruistically leave money on the table. It should be obvious by now that doesn't work.
Is the granting overly broad? Yeah. Probably. However, nothing is granted unless some entity applies for it. Backcountry could / can choose another name. They could serve customers. Instead they're paying lawyers to serve legal threats.
Sure, they can do that. But it's a short sighted growth strategy.
Ethics does not depend on the state. In many "backcountry" areas, the nearest LEO is several hours away. Even so, crime rates are lower than in many urban areas.
Nonsense, clearly David Ollila has provided the example to follow in such a situation.
Depending on a random federal bureaucracy to act as you would prefer rather than how they are set up to act is unlikely to satisfy. Private equity executives are human, if only barely so; they also have ethical duties. This episode is a test of the people who purchase clothing and equipment for outdoor activities. If we pass the test, backcountry.com will either change their unethical policies or go out of business. If we fail, we'll be buying ever-shittier products from an ever-shittier retailer.
Bureaucrats are also human. This is hardly a random federal agency, it is the one specifically devoted to handling this sort of thing. It is not too much to ask that they actually do that.
Not every company who gets sued is going to have the resources to fight it. It's also not reasonable to expect consumers to police the morality of every company they do business with. This is literally the purpose of having a government, to offload the responsibility of policing to people dedicated to it.
They are human, but they are not judges. When they act as judges, people have to spend eight years in federal court. [0] Much better for USPTO to let nearly everything through, trusting that most people are just trying to do business. When exceptions arise, they arise in the courts where they belong, but only after either A) someone infringes a valid trademark in some fashion that the courts can address and the holder decides that the courts should address that infringement or B) as in this case, frivolous dickheads decide to subject the public and the courts to some of their dickheaded frivolity.
You and I may have very different ideas about government. Do you support anti-BDS legislation? [1] Should people only speak the right speech, with the advance permission of the proper authorities? Fuck that, we have 1A for a reason. We have the right to say what we want and do business with whom we want. We also have the right not to speak and not to do business.
The entire concept of trademark is a creation of the state. If it no longer benefits the people, it should be fixed or eliminated. If cases like this were more common, I would support the latter alternative.
But from this point of view, they haven't been defending their trademark. The companies they're going after seem to be established and have been doing business for a while.
No they shouldn't, but in that case the burden is on the USPTO to deny the application in the first place. Once the trademark is granted, of course the company is going to defend it. The party to blame is the one granting it.
Anyone can claim anything as their trademark without registering with the USPTO. Registration is most useful as proof of using the term in commerce first, and also letting other businesses know that the term is already in use as a trademark.
Trademarks aren't examined for validity prior to registration, as patents are. Most are barely even glanced at until a court case brings one into question. All the trademark judges should already know that "backcountry" is not a defensible trademark, but the USPTO is not under any obligation to alert filers that their trademark won't hold up under scrutiny. They can send out as many C&D letters as they please, and maybe secure exclusivity that way, but if anyone had the resources to fight it (as the VC-backed firm they chose not to C&D), they would surely lose. As would the firm that chose to fight, because IP attorneys are expensive, and the court battles are long and protracted, especially if one side is using the process as a weapon.
> Trademarks aren't examined for validity prior to registration, as patents are.
Well, it sounds like that's the problem right there. It seems like it would be a lot more efficient to hire a few people at the USPTO to review applications instead of spending millions of dollars in lawsuits.
Trademark attorney-ing is a lucrative business. Don't go assuming that trademark law is set up entirely for the benefit of business-owners and their customers.
Why not both? Bullying and business aren't exclusive, they go hand in hand.
It's a consequence of capitalism in a market that isn't free.
A free market is bad, obviously, but a lack of it has these sorts of problems. This company's abuse of the system can be stopped through legislation or government ruling, but until then it will have to be suffered through.
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Edit3: GoFundMe for the legal costs of one of their targets: https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-defense-to-fight-backcountr...
Edit2: A follow-up article with more details on just how predatory and unreasonable BC (by proxy through their attorneys) have become: https://coloradosun.com/2019/11/05/backcountry-com-trademark...
Edit, @skierjerry, et, al, here's what I just sent my rep:
Heya <person>,
I read an article about Backcountry in the Colorado Sun that really disappointed me. Your employer has adopted ugly business tactics and begun using its size to attack smaller businesses who have the ubiquitous term “backcountry” in their name.
Please look at my lifetime spend with Backcountry as well as that of my wife. It is significant. It also stops now, and I’ll be making significant contributions to the legal funds of the boutique makes and businesses that your employer is assaulting.
I wish you nothing but the best on a personal level and hope that your employer chooses to take a better path."