Jury decides: Who owns “Tea Party Patriots”–battle over IP, Trademark Rights
Activism Saturday, November 12th, 2011
By Stella Lohmann, Renew America
A Cobb County jury holds the fate of who controls and owns the rights to the “Tea Party Patriots” name in a trial between two recognized figures within the two and a half year old Tea Party Movement. At odds are two founders of Tea Party Patriots organization — Roswell, GA resident, Amy Kremer (currently Chairman of Tea Party Express), and TPP President, Jenny Beth Martin, of Kennesaw, GA — co-workers after CNBC reporter, Rick Santelli called for ‘a tea party’ in protest to a pending stimulus bill by President Barak Obama and Congress in February of 2009.
The Woodstock-based Tea Party Patriots Inc. alleges that Amy Kremer, who lives in the Roswell area of Cobb, wrongly retained control of the group’s email list and intellectual property, including its trademark name and websites, after she was removed as a member of the group’s board of directors in September 2009. — Marietta Daily Journal. Both sides are suing for punitive damages and attorney fees.
Now more than two and half years after the two women began working on tea parties together, Kremer sat on the witness stand telling her side of why in September following the 9/12 March on Washington that drew an estimated 1.2 million at the Capitol she was ‘kicked off a board that I never agreed to be a part of.”
“I was ‘set up’ by Martin and other initial organizers: Mark Meckler, a lawyer from Sacramento, CA; Rob Neppell who Kremer says became involved by ‘default’ when another initial organizer Michael Patrick Leahy of TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter), recommended Neppell’s technical involvement; and legal counsel, Doug Chalmers, a political law attorney from Atlanta suggested by Martin in May of 2009.
To read more, visit: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/lohmann/111111
Short URL: https://reteaparty.com/?p=4382
Not really happy w/eithe Jenny Beth Martin OR Mark Meckler who I think tried to take over the Tea Party organization and register its very NAME w/o express permission from the rest of us.
Well, it was Jenny Beth and Mark who we heard from in the beginning. I never heard of or from Amy at all. Even now.
If she was on the Board and forced to leave, she should not have any of the group’s lists or contact information. Simple as that.
If she was wrongly removed, her recourse is not to take information and use it or take the name and claim it. Her recourse is to fight her removal legally and get back into the group or start a new group with another name.
If she is Tea Party Express and they are Tea Party, isn’t that two different groups?
Both of them are just after our money anyway.
Best thing to do is not give them any money.
Personally, I am astonished when someone who does something for free ends up getting a big salary on the backs of donors.
A salary is one thing.
A big fat salary is something else again.
Are you suggesting that Jenny Beth Martin gets a big fat salary? How much is a big fat salary? Just asking….