The American startup registered the Gram ™ trademark earlier than Telegram. There will be a court



    Telegram Messenger Inc. filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against the California crypto start-up Lantah LLC, which may issue the Gram cryptocurrency earlier than Telegram itself. The plaintiff from the British Virgin Islands accuses the American defendant of violating the rights to the Gram trademark, under which $ 1.7 billion of investments from about 200 accredited investors from around the world, including from Russia, have already been collected.

    The problem is that Lantah LLC filed a trademark application on February 25, 2018. Telegram began to collect investments at the end of January 2018, having no rights to the trademark and without registering it in the proper way. But the company insists that it "claimed" its right to Gram before Lantah applied.

    Daniel Jeffrey, the owner of Lantah LLC , claims that his company used the Gram trademark before she became aware of her use of Telegram. In favor of the defendant may play that Telegram conducted a private placement, and prospectuses for investors were not published in the public domain.

    On the Lantah website, it is indicated that the company is going to build a trading platform on the blockchain, and the name Gram is chosen as a derivative of the metric measurement system - “you can get a kilogram or milligram”. Startup even announces ICO plans for $ 350 million

    On March 9, 2018, the company reported to the SEC about attracting investments of $ 4.3 million, so it also has money for lawyers. Perhaps the American firm has even better lawyers than the Durov brothers.

    The lawsuit was filed on May 11, 2018. Telegram claims that it entered into agreements with investors on the sale of Gram back in January, so the company has priority rights to the trademark and it did not have to register the rights to Gram. Trademark rights in this case are protected by “common law,” the lawsuit says.

    The trial is watched with interest by investors who have invested heavily in the TON platform and thereby bought out the rights to millions of Gram tokens. In a commentary to the Vedomosti newspaper, the lawyer of Nektorov, Saveliev & Partners Oleg Volkov explainsthat under US law, a person who has previously used a trademark in a business has priority over a person who has filed an application for registration of that mark after it began to be used by another company. In order to win a case, Telegram needs to prove that it began to publicly use the trademark in its commercial activities before filing the registration for the trademark with another person. But what date is considered the starting point for using the trademark - the court will determine.

    Yevgeny Krasnov, a Buzko & Partners lawyer practicing in the American market, confirmed to Vedomosti that the United States is almost the only country in which trademark rights are acquired on the basis of commercial use, rather than registration. Lawyer believes Telegram’s chances to win the case are high.

    However, new circumstances may be revealed in the process. Since Daniel Jeffrey has already stated that his company used the Gram trademark before it became known about Telegram’s intentions to create a product of the same name, evidence of this may appear. And here the court will decide who earlier started the “commercial use” of the Gram trademark.

    In Europe, Telegram Messenger Inc. Only on April 25, 2018, she filed an application with the European Intellectual Property Office for the registration of rights to the Gram trademark. Apparently, in Europe no one had time to admonish with the registration of this trademark, so there should not be legal proceedings here. But in general, the situation with the “theft” of cryptocurrency names resembles the situation with phishing, when users are lured to sites with a similar name. Also here, some businessmen are trying to sell fake tokens to inattentive investors under the guise of real ones.

    Gram should become a native cryptocurrency for the global world platform Telegram Open Network (TON) - a new generation blockchain that will replace Bitcoin and Etherium.

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