MAILBAG - Oct. 25, 2007

Board should be transparent about offers

I appreciate the focus of the Independent on the Huntington Beach City School District board’s consideration of selling “surplus” school sites, and I enjoyed Michael Alexander’s well-written article (“Groups want school sites,” Oct. 11).

Despite board member Cathy McGough’s earlier appeal (“Enhanced education funds needed,” Aug. 15), I have not yet heard a compelling case made for the precipitous action of selling any of the current school sites being leased to cooperative tenants.

Capital improvement and facilities needs should not be addressed by entering the real estate market (sell/lease in order to buy/lease).

Now that the HBCSD board has received its offers, it needs to be transparent and candid with its constituents.

The board needs to articulate its intentions and motivations regarding any move to sell or otherwise alter the current use of the sites in question.

The board members should not act without the community behind them. That is what representation is all about.

TIM GEDDES

Legitimacy of rights to trademark name at issue

The Independent’s recent editorial (“Trademark war shows city’s greed,” Oct. 11) was inaccurate in many respects. I would like to offer these corrections and background:

1) The lawsuit against the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau is not about naming rights to “Surf City,” but the legitimacy of our rights to our trademark name, “Surf City USA.” If anyone feels upset about the name “Surf City” being trademarked, they missed the boat. The first trademark for “Surf City” was granted more than six years ago to Mattel Inc. and three other “Surf City” registrations have been granted since that time — none of them to the bureau or Huntington Beach!

2) The “friendly rivalry” in the media was created after the bureau registered its first four “Surf City USA” trademarks in November 2005. The Santa Cruz merchant family that filed a lawsuit in October 2006 was more than a year late and conveniently overlooked the fact that they never used our trademark name until after we registered it and they read about it in their local newspaper!

3) Surf City USA does not exist anywhere; it is a state of mind we have captured and trademarked to promote our city, just like “Surf City Squeeze” is an Arizona-based frozen soft drink retailer and “Surf City Coffee” is a Santa Cruz coffee retailer. If Santa Cruz retailers want to promote themselves as “Surf City Santa Cruz,” we have no problems, either; they just can’t use our trademark name. They also can’t use “Surf City” on numerous products trademarked by other companies.

4) As the defendant in litigation, the bureau has not spent a dime to defend itself. The costs have been borne entirely by Chubb Insurance Company. It is exactly these kinds of unfortunate lawsuits, which are done strictly for publicity value to the merchants and lawyers involved, that cost all of us in the long run — both in Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz.

As the official marketing agency for our city, we have every right to trademark the name “Surf City USA” on behalf of the residents who live here.

This is what intellectual property rights are all about, and it is this bundle of rights that allows authors to write books and receive royalties or artists to write songs and record them without fear they will be copied and sold by someone else.

The Surf City USA brand was created after a year of research that included tens of thousands of consumers and Huntington Beach residents.

The logo was developed with help from both The Independent and The Huntington Beach Wave, which both ran front page opinion polls to assist in the final selection of the brand logo.

This is the first time our city has ever invested in a professional campaign to market itself that included extensive input from our residents.

We can all be proud of the Surf City USA brand.

DOUG TRAUB

President and CEO, Huntington Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau