The Mongol Nation Motorcycle Club can keep their trademark logo, typically worn on jackets and vests by members, thanks to a Ninth Circuit ruling handed down Friday. But the three-judge panel also declined to overturn the 2018 criminal conviction of the organization on federal racketeering charges.
In a written statement, Stephen Stubbs, the Mongols general counsel, called the ruling “a victory not only for the Mongols Motorcycle Club, but for all motorcycle clubs, freedom, and America as a whole.”
Headquartered in Southern California, the Mongols Motorcycle Club has been around since the late 1960s, and has roughly 2,000 members spread across different chapters around the world. Federal prosecutors have described the club as “a beehive of pernicious criminal activity,” and “a group of violent motorcycle gang members who orchestrated the Mongol Gang’s commission of brutal crimes, including multiple murders, assaults, shootings, stabbings and drug trafficking.”
After a decade-long prosecution, 77 members of the gang were convicted, as was the Mongols organization itself, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). A federal jury ordered the club be fined $500,000 and forced to forfeit a large stockpile of vests, guns and ammunition seized by federal agents in raids. The jury also decided the club should forfeit their trademarked patch — a cartoon depiction of a Mongol warrior riding a motorcycle — over to the government.
Months after the verdict, U.S. District Judge David Carter said the Mongols could keep their trademark, ruling that such a forfeiture would violate its First Amendment rights to free speech and association, and would also constitute an excessive fine prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
Both parties appealed. The Mongols argued the organization wasn’t an indictable “person” under the RICO statute. The federal government asked the Ninth Circuit to simply dissolve the Mongols’ trademark, effectively allowing anyone to buy and sell products with the design.
During oral arguments held this past September, Mongol Nation attorney George Steele said that dissolving the trademark could lead to violence, since motorcycle gangs often use intimidation and force to make sure no non-members wear their logos. That drew a retort from Assistant U.S. Attorney Bram Alden.
Read more at https://www.courthousenews.com/ninth-circuit-sides-with-mongol-nation-letting-them-keep-trademark-logo/