Entrepreneur’s litigious actions against entrepreneurs

Paul Barrett of Bloomberg Businessweek writes in the latest issue about how Entrepreneur magazine has made a habit out of suing entrepreneurs that use the word entrepreneur.

Barrett writes, “The archetypal trademark — for McDonald’s or Xerox, say—prevents competitors from using a distinctive word that might cause consumers to assume they were buying a product made by the mark holder. To Castro and others, ‘entrepreneur’ seems different. ‘How can you trademark a commonly used word, derived from the French, that’s hundreds of years old?’ he asks. And more to the point, ‘why would the publisher of Entrepreneur magazine be bullying entrepreneurs?’

“Since the early 1980s, EMI has sued or threatened to sue scores of businesses and organizations it claims infringed its trademarks. EMI won’t provide a tally of its targets, but it almost always prevails.

“Scott Smith, a public-relations man in Sacramento, Calif., fought back and paid the price. A federal judge ruled in 2003 that he had to drop EntrepreneurPR as his firm name, stop publishing a quarterly compilation of press releases called Entrepreneur Illustrated, and pay EMI more than $1 million in damages and attorneys’ fees. ‘They crushed me, and I had to file for personal bankruptcy,’ says Smith, who is still contesting what he owes the publisher.

“EMI goes after a broad spectrum of businesses, ranging from Internet startups to a fledgling clothing manufacturer. In 2001 it persuaded the nonprofit Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University to change the title of its quarterly alumni newsletter, The Entrepreneur. In 2004 it stopped 3Entrepreneurs, a San Diego apparel company, from putting the phrase ‘Entrepreneur Generation’ on T-shirts, sweaters, and hats.”

Read more here.