Union Square venture firm gets sued
Venture capital firm Union Square Ventures is suing buyout firm Union Square Partners (f.k.a. Capital Z Financial Services), for trademark infringement.
Union Square Ventures, firm of the well-known Internet investor Fred Wilson, has a higher profile, and even comes up first in Google results when you search for the other firm, Union Square Partners. But the firms have been confused several times by outsiders, and USV wants to stop it.
Dan Primack notes the offices are a block or two away from each other in New York, and rightly asks why USP chose to take the name given that USV was around first.
Notably, a number of venture firms have sprung up in downtown SF over the years, but none have taken the Unions Square name despite it being a prominent landmark in SF.
Courtesy of Dan, here’s the complaint and response:
Complaint: http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/wp-content/USV_Lawsuit.pdf
Response: http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/wp-content/USP_Response.pdf
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
