For the past decade, the Kelloggs company has implemented a plan to claim ownership to the TOUCAN.
Its basis for this preposterous claim has been that since
it utilizes a cartoon character as its spokescharacter for one of its cereal brands who is identified as "Toucan Sam", it owns the species.
This spokescharacter may be familiar to some children as a plump blue colored bird like character with a beak which may have even been copied to look like a roll of Life Savers. Albeit the cartoon character is named Toucan Sam, it in no way resembles any natural TOUCAN.
A comparable relationship would be that neither Mickey Mouse, Minney Mouse nor Mighty Mouse actually resemble any real mice.
The owners of those cartoon characters, far better known than Toucan Sam,
to the best of my knowledge have never made claims to the word Mouse because that concept is nothing but absurd and defies common sense.
Kelloggs has forcibly opposed the Toucan Golf Company from registering the name "Toucan Gold" for use to identify its set of golf clubs and golf putters.
During Kelloggs nine year long opposition, its lawyers attempted to intimidate me by claiming that not only did Kelloggs have "deep pockets" but also
the main lawyer was a former employee of the Trademark office and still maintained many "friends" only down the street from their offices.
Besides the intimidations and unscrupulous innuendos that they somehow had not only deep pockets but also trademark officials in their pockets,
they embarked on legal maneuvers, designed to postpone and to inflict as much monetary damage as they could on our business. Kelloggs used those maneuvers rather than the using the facts, with the stated intent to overpower me with litigation costs.
The top brass at Kelloggs, including its Chairman, Carlos Gutierrez, and its President were made aware of the tactics being employed by these attorneys, by me and with scores of communications.
The conclusion has to be drawn that since those immoral tactics continued for 9 years, they had to be sanctioned and as well as paid for by them.
The good news is that the Trademark officials and three judges ruled that Kelloggs does not own the TOUCAN. They also confirmed to me that the only people who may have been confused by Toucan Gold golf clubs and a cartoon character name Toucan Sam were the bird brains at Kelloggs. As far as deep pockets, I believe the attorneys milked those pockets for as
long as they could and were only pursuing the ridiculous claim strickly for the billing.
Kelloggs, unhappy with the decision made by the supposing "friends" at the TBA continued their plot to restrain my use and sale of Toucan Gold golf clubs. Statements were made again by the Kellogg's lawyer reminding me of their deep pockets, and that now they would not only oppose my trademark request but would go ALL OUT to put me out of business by depriving me of our company name, Toucan Golf and and our logo, neither of which had anything to do with our trademark application.
Their tactics included demands to examine thousands of our sales records since our inception, along with the disclosure of every year of our federal, state and city income tax returns. This supposed discovery included invading our privacy by coming into our lives with cameras
taking photos of everything in our offices, manufacturing facilities, restrooms, break rooms and even the collection of various artwork on our walls.
The only item Kelloggs didn't request was to smell our underwear. Reluctantly, I provided access to all that information, as it would have been very costly to protect it. There is nothing in our sales records or in our income tax returns which I needed to hide
other than from direct competitors, who could utilize such information to compete unfairly. The violation here is that our Government can't barge into my office and just look into every drawer, yet Kelloggs could. It felt like rape, it was humiliating, and left our employees with a sense of concern about their jobs. By the time Kelloggs left my facility, all our trade secrets were exposed. Nothing in that "discovery", as they claimed it to be, was used in the actual trial, confirming to me, that its only purpose was to intimidate and harass not only me, my family, but also my employees. To this very moment, what my income taxes or the pictures on my walls had or have anything to do with my request for a trademark puzzles me.
Kelloggs was using its vast amount of money in the attempt to restrain me from doing business and was hoping to put Toucan Golf out of business by subjecting it to as much legal cost as it could.
After losing at the Trademark office, Kelloggs came up with a new claim of dilution, and filed a suit in its backyard, again telling me I didn't have a chance there and should just give up my registration or be prepared to face their full wrath. This time they also included an offer for me to accept some petty cash in exchange for acknowledging that had real claims to the word TOUCAN.
On September 6, 2001, the US District Court of Western District of Michigan, in Kellogg's back yard agreed with the finding of the Trademark office and ruled in our favor.
Peter Boyko, Survivor