Black Flag lose trademark lawsuit against off-shoot reunion 'Flag'

There was a bit of confusion following the announcement earlier this year that two separate line-ups of legendary hardcore-punk outfit Black Flag were to reform, each under a different name. Predictable legal tensions swiftly followed between the two factions, with a judge now ruling on the issue.

The two reunions see 1979-80 vocalist Ron Reyes take the copyrighted Black Flag name, teaming up with founding member Greg Ginn on guitar and Roberto “Robo” Valverde on drums, while the other band – going by the shortened name of ‘Flag’ – consists of Chuck Dukowski, Bill Stevenson, Keith Morris and Dez Cadena.

This led to Ginn filing a lawsuit against Flag – with the group’s most famous and popular vocalist Henry Rollins cited as a defendant in the case.

Ginn claimed ownership of the Black Flag trademark under his label SST Records, accusing the reformed offshoot, as well as Rollins, of “lying to the Trademark Office on registrations; using his own label’s record covers to feign as though they’ve been continuing to use Black Flag since 1979, and in an what’s alleged to be an act of ‘outrageous fraud,’ using bootleg SST t-shirts in an attempt to show they’ve been making such products in that time.”

He also called the Flag reunion a “colorable imitation” which is “likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception among consumers”.

Now, however, it’s been announced that a court has thrown out Ginn’s appeal. Flag have released the following summary on what the judge thought:

“(1) the court found that SST had no rights in the trademarks;
(2) Ginn seemed to have no individual rights in the Black Flag trademarks;
(3) even if either had had any rights in those marks, they had abandoned those rights through a failure to police the mark for nearly 30 years;
(4) the defendants’ claim that the Black Flag assets were owned by a statutory partnership comprised of various former band members – even if these members only consisted of Henry and Ginn, based on (a) accepting Ginn’s argument that he never quit and given that there is no evidence or allegation that Henry ever quit – has merit;
(5) that even if the plaintiffs had some trademark claim in the marks, there was no likelihood of consumer confusion between Black Flag and Flag given the ample press coverage over the dispute; and
(6) the trademark application and registration that Henry and Keith made was done in good faith (e.g. not fraudulently) – and is thus not necessarily subject to cancellation – given that they understood their actions to have been done on the part of the Black Flag partnership (see No. 4, above).”

Both reformed line-ups are currently touring.

[via SPIN / Stereogum]