The VI Carnival Committee intends to appeal a judge’s recent ruling in their trademark dispute with Department of Tourism officials.
“In the words of John Paul Jones and FDR, we are just beginning to fight,” Carnival Committee chairman Edgar Baker Phillips said in a statement. “This is an important issue of federal property rights protection that affects not only the Carnival Committee, but other local businesses and large companies like Facebook, Apple and Amazon. We will appeal and uphold the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and the US Supreme Court.”
The commission registered the trademarks “St. Thomas Carnival” and “Virgin Islands Carnival” with the US Patent and Trademark office in 2007. While the group had traditionally organized the event, the Legislature passed Act 8153 in 2019, which established the Division of Festivals under the Department of Tourism and charged the division with promotion and execution of Carnivals and Festivals on the three islands.The Act added three at least four paid positions in Tourism, when over the years many of the activities were carried out on a voluntary basis by members of the Carnival Committee.
The Carnival Committee filed a lawsuit March 28, in which the group’s attorney, Terri Griffiths, argued that other entities are prohibited by federal law from using closely related or “confusingly similar” trademarks.
But the government has always provided the funds needed to run the Carnival, and Assistant Attorney General VI Venetia Velasquez argued that the committee has no authority to stop the Department of Tourism from organizing and running Carnival events in St. Thomas — or using those words to activity described.
Carnival “is a catch-all term and St. Thomas is where we’re standing today,” so banning the government from using those terms when organizing carnival events “would be so absurd and such a denial of the public interest, Velasquez said. at a hearing in April.
Chief U.S. District Court Judge Robert Molloy agreed with the government and found that the phrases “are generic, and therefore neither valid nor legally protected,” according to an opinion filed Aug. 8.
Generic trademarks are not protected by the Lanham Act, and Molloy found that committee trademarks “are not unchallenged” under the law. He denied the Committee’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which sought to stop Tourism officials from using the terms.
Phillips said his group intends to appeal Molloy’s order and he believes the court did not consider all the motions and arguments presented by the Committee, including a 20-page motion for sanctions against the government filed by Griffiths, and notes that they served a complaint to Governor Albert Bryan Jr. in Aprill.
