12/13/13 10:12 AM

Got an email response form my letter to Specialized:

I Screwed up, and I own it

I would like to apologize and let everyone know I realize I handled this
situation wrong from the start and I’m very sorry for that. As many of you
have probably already seen by now, I went up to Café Roubaix to meet with
Dan in person to apologize and make good with him. Café Roubaix will
continue on with its name. The video is up on Café Roubaix's Facebook page.
Dan is the real deal, after meeting him I realize this and am embarrassed by
how ridiculous this is. What happened was wrong. There are no excuses but I
do feel like I owe it to you all to explain how we found ourselves in this
situation, the lessons we've learned from it and, most importantly, how it
will change the way we do things moving forward.

Over the past few years we’ve seen a massive spike in counterfeit products,
and most of the riders have no idea these products are fake, which is
extremely dangerous because the risk of failure on these untested products
is extremely high. In one instance, the entire head tube and fork sheared
off a counterfeit Tarmac, causing the rider who had no idea he was not on a
genuine Specialized product to faceplant and destroy his shoulder. To give
you an idea of how much this issue has blown up, 10 Specialized employees
hunt fake products across 30 major ecommerce platforms, we've identified
over 5,000 listings, worth $11,000,000 USD in counterfeit goods since
January 1st of this year alone. This is about double what it was last year.
Due to this we have recently gone after IP and trademark issues more
aggressively in the interest of protecting the safety of riders and the
livelihood of our dealers and their hard-working employees. See the attached
picture to understand how dangerous fake goods are.

In the deal with Café Roubaix, the wheels were the red flag that got the
attention of our outside attorney’s who were already sort of on red alert
for anything that pops up, although Café Roubaix wasn’t in the same camp as
the counterfeiters, they still got caught in the crossfire. There is so much
activity with infringers that it’s overwhelming and I don’t see them all.
The first I heard of it was Saturday morning and by Monday the thing went
huge. But still, that was my fault, which is why I’m so embarrassed. I
should have called Dan immediately.

I heard you and you can rest assured I took it to heart. I realize now that
we went too far with this aggressive approach and as a result and in some
cases we hurt the local bikes shops and small businesses we wanted to
protect. As a result we’re going to take a much closer look at all pending
and future intellectual property and trademark issues, making sure to only
pursue those that present a clear and obvious danger. The letter on Epix
Gear was issued before the Café Roubaix story broke and has since been
pulled.

I handled this very poorly and I own full responsibility. Dan at Café
Roubaix and I have become friends and he’s happy with the solution. I hope
you too accept my sincere apology. Like you all, I’m passionate about
cycling and want to do everything possible to grow the activity we all love.

Sincerely,

-Mike Sinyard
Founder

12/13/13 12:01 PM

Bike Rumors had the details of both stories in this morning's issue.

12/13/13 12:40 PM

While I can fully sympathize with their problems with counterfeiters and understand that they need to fight them aggressively, that doesn't even come close to explaining why they went after Epix, Cafe Roubaix, Volagi or any of the others they've sued or bullied into submission. These are two entirely separate issues and there is no way that any of the others could even have been remotely suspected of producing counterfeit Specialized products, so Sinyard's explanation simply isn't believable. His public mea cupla is certainly commendable and kudos to him for doing it, but the fact that he offers the above explanation for unrelated actions makes me wonder if he really gets it.

It remains to be seen if their practices will actually change.

On a somewhat related note, I noticed that the Ritchey parts on my new MTB have hologram stickers on them, presumably indicating that they are the real deal. I've seen really cheap prices for Ritchey and Bontrager carbon seatposts and other parts from Chinese sources on Ebay recently. It's hard to know if they're just discontinued models/cancelled orders that are being blown out by the manufacturer or if they're actually counterfeit. The ads don't mention the company name, but it's on the parts themselves. The prices were tempting, but I decided that trusting my nether regions to a carbon post of questionable pedigree was not a good idea. ;-)

12/13/13 5:06 PM

quote:

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I've seen really cheap prices for Ritchey and Bontrager carbon seatposts and other parts from Chinese sources on Ebay recently.

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12/13/13 7:14 PM

Now I am getting spammed by Mike ;0

12/13/13 9:16 PM

I checked and Specialized has a big enough in-house legal team that I would not have expected outside counsel to have pulled the trigger against the bike shop without a go ahead from in-house counsel.

Even if outside counsel had been given broad discretion to act quickly, I would have expected them to have had the judgment to not have gone after the bike shop.

I also would have expected the first step to have been a cease and desist letter. This should have led to a discussion that resulted in an amicable settlement.

My guess is that outside counsel either exceeded their mandate or exercised extremely poor judgment. Both reasons to look for better counsel. I also note that there is a job posting on the Internet for an in-house intellectual property attorney at Specialized. But it's for someone with 2 to 3 years of experience. That's too junior to run an IP program for a company the size of Specialized, so I hope they have a more senior IP attorney on staff.

12/13/13 10:06 PM

> I also would have expected the first step to have been a cease and desist letter.

Isn't that what occurred? I could be wrong, but that is my take reading the 1st news story link in the 1st post of this thread. It was not explicitly clear though.

I agree about going after the bike shop. Perhaps the staff is just overworked/understaffed or is dealing with a large volume of bulk/batch work and does not look too closely at each individual case, initially. Being further speculative, I might infer that this type of problem is so common for Specialized that they must be mailing out a common/generic cease and desist form letter.

12/14/13 6:49 AM

quote:

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But it's for someone with 2 to 3 years of experience. That's too junior to run an IP program for a company the size of Specialized, so I hope they have a more senior IP attorney on staff.

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