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(Reuters) – Two Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firms that use the word “Monument” in their monikers have agreed to resolve their trademark tiff in federal court over naming rights.
Politico had the detail back in April
A Monumental trademark spat
WHOSE MONUMENT IS IT, ANYWAY?: A dispute over the names of a pair of D.C. lobbying firms has spilled out into the open after one of the firms, Monument Advocacy, sued the other, Monument Strategies, to block the latter from taking legal action aimed at forcing Monument Advocacy to change its name.
— According to the complaint, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Jonathan Alexander, Monument Strategies’ president and chief executive and a former Democratic Hill staffer, threatened in a letter last month “to seek judicial intervention to obtain orders permanently restraining and enjoining” Monument Advocacy’s use of the name “and any other confusingly similar name.”
— Monument Advocacy was started by Stewart Verdery, a former official in the George W. Bush administration, in 2006 as Verdery Consulting, but changed its name weeks later to Monument Policy Group, applying for and eventually receiving a trademark for the name. In 2018, the firm changed its name to Monument Advocacy and had its trademark application granted the following year. The firm lobbies on behalf of dozens of major clients, according to a PI analysis of lobbying disclosures, among them Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft, Eli Lilly, JPMorgan and Boeing. The firm reported more than $10 million in lobbying revenues in 2021.
— Monument Strategies was founded in 2005, and reported $475,000 in lobbying revenues last year representing the Association of Catastrophe Adjusters, Alliance One International, ?Pyxus International and others, disclosures show. In 2007, Monument Strategies complained to Monument Policy Group that its use of Monument Policy Group “was confusingly similar to ‘Monument Strategies,’” the complaint alleges, but though Monument Strategies was aware of MPG’s use” of the trademark since about that time, “Strategies failed to challenge or otherwise object to MPG’s use of said trademark.”
— The lawsuit contends that Monument Strategies’ “failure to object to or challenge” its trademarks at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office “or in any other forum constituted acquiescence in the MPG Trademarks,” and that Monument Strategies “unreasonably delayed almost 16 years in waiting to challenge” the trademarks. In a letter from February filed as an exhibit to the lawsuit, Monument Strategies’ Alexander told Monument Advocacy that “there is too much confusion on your new name. Advocacy is too much close to ‘strategies’.” He asserted: “Case law is on my side. You’re going to have to change your name.”
— Monument Advocacy is seeking an order affirming the use of its name does not infringe upon Monument Strategies and that would block Monument Strategies from taking any action to “interfere” with the continued use of its name.
— In a statement, Monument Advocacy’s attorney Michael Steger said his client “is simply seeking confirmation from the Court that it can continue to use its well-established business names as it has for the past 15 years.” Monument Strategies did not respond to a request for comment.
