About windphucker
Windphucker, more than just another name for a Hawk, the Kestrel, it represents a mindset. It represents people who fly against the winds of adversity, someone who takes on the invisible forces of nature and turns them into their own strengths. A Windphucker represents someone who is not afraid to be different in order to soar to new heights. To be the hunter and not the hunted, a leader but also someone who exist in harmony with the flow of nature. Windphuckers are the hurricane hunters, kite surfers, the sky divers of the world, the oppressed fighting against inequalities, they are the fast and free thriving in today’s turbulent winds. Windphucker - "Phast and Phree"
San Fransisco, CA, USA
fbartels@procoverplus.com
Frank, and his son, Tyler Bartels sporting Windphucker trucker hats.
The story
Back in college at UC San Diego in the early 70’s I was awakened by my roommate at 3AM who had erupted into laughter. He was studying for a humanities exam the next day and was finishing up reading an old noval. He came across a passage that described a “windfucker” (hawk) hovering over the hillside. He kept repeating out loud, “windfucker” “windfucker” “windfucker” and laughing uncontrollably. When I finally came to and was fully awake it was at that moment that it struck me that “windfucker” could be a major brand , a bit edgy, but certainly had the potential to be something big.
Fast forward to the San Francisco Bay Area. Around 1998 I had met an Intellectual Property attorney that I came to know while having lunch in Palo Alto. We connected and over the next couple of years I kept him on “a bottle of wine a year” retainer for which he would allow me to bounce ideas off of him. In 2000 I brought the Trademark idea of Windphucker to him. He said he thought it was a winner and he would be happy to do the application. At the time he was a junior attorney at one of the most prestigious IP law firms in Silicon Valley called Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison. I wrote him a retainer check, made up samples for the US Patent and Trademark office and waited. Two weeks later I received a phone call from my attorney informing me that he had to give me my money back. He said that word of the Windphucker application had spread like wildfire throughout the firm and everyone was talking about it. When the senior partners got “wind” of the application they put a kibosh on it.
I had another attorney for business matters at the time and he agreed to take on the application. The application was submitted with the toned down “ph” substituted for the “f” in windfucker. I was hoping that this might make it past the disparaging test for issuance of a trademark but it was rejected by the USPTO.
Fast forward again, about the same time an Asian-American rock band wanted to trademark the name of their band, The Slants, but were rejected. Then after some years of litigation, on December 23, 2015 the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard the appeal and struck down not just the USPTO decision about The Slants but the entire section of the Lanham Act that bars “disparaging” trademarks. It came down to First Amendment rights.
As soon as I heard about the court’s decision I immediately flashed back to my own mark, Windphucker, and thought perhaps it was time to revive it. It just so happened that the month before I had met a Trade Mark attorney at a restaurant across from the hotel where I was staying in Pennsylvania Her firm was located in DC and we talked about IP and exchanged cards. After hearing the court ruling on “The Slants” I gave her a call and she agreed to move my mark forward and submitted it to the USPTO where it immediately went into suspension.
As it turned out the USPTO appealed the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision to the Supreme Court so until that case was heard everyone’s applications that was effected by the decision were put on hold.
On June 26, 2017 the US Supreme Court ruled 8 to 0 in favor of “The Slants” at which point my own Trade Mark application went from Suspended to Live, which brings us to where we are today, launching the brand “Windphucker”.