Author Topic: How to Crush an Outlaw Biker Club: Seize Its … Logo?  (Read 1091 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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How to Crush an Outlaw Biker Club: Seize Its … Logo?
« on: November 22, 2018, 02:37:23 pm »
NY Times By Serge F. Kovaleski  Nov. 21, 2018

LOS ANGELES — For many years, federal law enforcement authorities have been trying to take down the Mongols, a biker group they consider one of the most dangerous criminal enterprises in the country.

They have infiltrated it with undercover agents. They have hammered members with charges ranging from drug dealing to money laundering to murder. They have conducted mass arrests that resulted in dozens of guilty pleas, including one by a past president.

But after a decade of trying, they have failed to deliver what they view as the coup de grâce: seizing control of the Mongols’ trademarked logo, a drawing of a brawny Genghis Khan-like figure sporting a queue and sunglasses, riding a chopper while brandishing a sword.

Now, in a racketeering trial underway in Orange County, Calif., federal prosecutors believe they have their best chance yet to take the Mongols’ intellectual property, using a novel approach to asset forfeiture law, which allows the seizure of goods used in the commission of crimes.

Prosecutors argue that taking the logo will deprive the group of its “unifying symbol” — the banner under which prosecutors say the group marauds.

If federal prosecutors have their way, one of them boasted at an earlier point in the court battle, the police could stop any Mongol and “literally take the jacket right off his back.”

But legal experts question the prosecutors’ grasp of intellectual property law. “Trademark rights are not tangible personal property like a jacket. They are intangible rights,” said Evan Gourvitz, an intellectual property lawyer with the law firm Ropes & Gray in New York. “But prosecutors are treating a trademark like a jacket.”

The Mongols are equally mystified. The logo — also called a patch — is emblazoned on the vests, T-shirts and motorcycles of hundreds of members.

“Lots of brothers have tattoos of the marks on their necks and heads and everywhere,” David Santillan, the national president of the club, said. “How do you regulate that?”

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/us/mongols-motorcycle-club-government.html