Actually, this Trademark is a sitting duck for the taking. Because:
1. In 2022, the US Trademark Office declined International Watchman’s recent attempt to trade mark other product classes under “NATO" for offending S.2 of the US Trademark Act because it "consists of, or includes matter, which may falsely suggest a connection with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”)”. Going so far as to declare in International Watchman’s unsuccessful appeal "even if the PTO earlier mistakenly registered a similar or identical mark suffering the same defect”. (see failed application 87302907 - 2022).
In short: the US Trademark Office has signalled that this TM would not be supported today, if challenged.
2. (S. 60 TM Act) has always required the applicant to make “declaration of bona fide intention”, including that the name/term is not being used by others. And yet, he of course trademarked ’NATO” and “NATO G10” against the product classes for Watches and Watchstraps. So, either he dreamt up these expressions from nowhere (in which case it was a bona fide application), or his application was founded on a fraud.
When this trademark was previously challenged, point 2 (above) was neglected, despite there being an over abundance of evidence that these names/terms were already very long established in the industry.
And were the status of this trademark to be challenged in this court, the court will be unable to ignore the fact that the US Trademark Office has already created the precedent (in 2022) that NATO should not be the subject of a Trademark.
This whole thing is a typical ruse of “trade mark squatter” or “trade mark troll”, whose business model is to abuse an unlikely TM to force - through extortion/lawfare/injunction - legitimate distributors and sellers to pay a license fee for the use of what are actually historic, generic watch industry terms.
The plaintiff’s main website (internationalwatchman) displays no products for sale: and the Browse button merely invites you to register (upon which you receive a reply that “your application will be considered”).
But International Watchman does offer licenses (“Trademark for lease”) in the “Highly Acclaimed Trademark NATO”; even citing “More Than 80,000 Google Searches and growing”.
Even in this Court action, the nature of the business model goes unhidden. Defendant 512 wrote to the court: “I did write to the attorney involved and they requested a payment of $5,000.00 as a settlement, which I think as ridiculous as I sold 0 units and I also removed the listing as requested and relisted after removing any keywords which may infringe copyright”.
A small trader being extorted through the threat of court action and so the closure of his eBay account, to pay - what would be for him - a considerable amount of money to International Watchman Inc.
Does it not seem that the Southern District of Florida is being borrowed/used as International Watchman’s useful idiot for the purposes of extortion?
Notably, on the defendant list of this court case, the names of large companies which sell “NATO Watch Straps” do not appear. Why? Because just as with the International Watchman’s earlier actions against purveyors of “NATO Watch Straps”, he targets small outfits; those who may be overawed by the fear of a Court summons or injunction/threat of legal costs.
International Watchman Inc (the plaintiff) is not going after companies which have in-house counsel, can fight these vexatious claims, and afford to provide evidence that they were selling “NATO Watch Straps” in the USA long before the plaintiff fraudulently claimed “first use” of the term NATO in relation to IC 14 products. Think J Crew, Omega etc.
Either way, it is within the powers of this court to cancel the Trade Mark registrations under 5 U.S.C. §1064(3) THE LANHAM ACT (CANCELLATION OF REGISTRATION).
