Travel Spike Issues Cease and Desist to Competitor After U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Confirms Their Legal Ownership of the Travel Ad Network® Trademark

Travel Spike Issues Cease and Desist to Competitor After U.S. Patent Travel Spike, LLC(travelspike.com), a leading travel marketing and technology company and the owner of the Travel Ad Network® service, an advertising network for the travel, tourism and hospitality industry, today announced that they issued a cease and desist letter to direct competitor Travel Ad Network (TAN) after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued
U.S. Trademark Registration No. 3,912,781 covering Travel Spike's "Travel Ad Network®" trademark. The application for the trademark was filed to protect the company's intellectual property and help differentiate Travel Ad Network® from competitors improperly using Travel Spike's mark. TAN, a company reported to have raised $31 million from venture capitalists, uses the mark as the name of its company, service and website address.

Travel Spike is making this public announcement based on the response received to a formal cease and desist letter delivered to Brian Silver, TAN's CEO, and TAN's board of directors on July 5, 2011.

"The USPTO's decision to award Travel Spike with the mark, Travel Ad Network®, is a major corporate accomplishment for our company," said Howard Koval, Travel Spike's Executive Vice President and Chief Strategist. "In addition to protecting our intellectual property, we hope
that this will be the initial step toward helping misinformed advertisers and publishers distinguish between us and others using our trademark."

Travel Spike has spent considerable resources counseling clients confused about the relationship between Travel Spike's Travel Ad Network® service and TAN's use of the same name. In fact, TAN tried to register TRAVEL AD NETWORK as its mark, but the USPTO awarded it to Travel Spike, a decision TAN did not challenge. This now confirms that Travel Spike's continuous use of Travel Ad Network® constitutes legal ownership of the mark.

"This process has taken over 2 years and we are pleased the USPTO has made it clear that we own the Travel Ad Network® mark," said Ryan Bifulco, Travel Spike's CEO and founder. "We pursued this because our business and brand have been negatively impacted by confusing marketing practices used by our competitors. We are prepared to protect our IP and took a legal position because we cannot allow TAN to continue to build a competitive business and raise capital based on our intellectual property."

Travel Spike will continue to actively expand its Travel Ad Network® service by adding new sites, partners and capabilities to better service the needs of its travel-centric client base. Please contact howard@travelspike.com for details.

Contact:
Larry Thomas, Latergy LLC
646-290-0453
lthomas@latergy.com

Source: Travel Spike, LLC

Founded in 2001, Travel Spike, LLC (www.travelspike.com) is a leading travel marketing and technology solutions company. In 2002, Travel Spike created the Travel Ad Network® service, a vertical online marketing platform exclusively focused on travel, tourism and hospitality. Travel Ad Network® offers travel advertisers and agencies a suite of digital services, including display ads, travel deal text links, targeted emails, social media marketing, lead generation and cross platform integrated content-driven sponsorships. Travel Spike's management team also provides strategic consulting to established travel brands and to early stage travel start-ups. Travel Spike's technology group designs, develops and integrates proprietary technology, booking engines and e-commerce applications. Over the past 10 years, Travel Spike has helped thousands of destinations, travel suppliers and travel brands by leveraging their industry-specific experience and expertise.

Ryan Bifulco
3300 Highlands Parkway
Suite 120
Smyrna, GA 30082

This release was published on openPR.