Trophy Whitetails with Pat and Nicole Reeve by Duncan Dobie

Author:Duncan Dobie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

TRADEMARK DISPUTE

“During our first year of filming together in 2007, Nicole and I got home from a trip one day and were in the process of washing our clothes and packing to leave on another hunt when the doorbell rang. It was the mailman. He handed me a certified letter from a person in the hunting industry who claimed that he had trademarked the term ‘24/7.’ This person threatened to sue us if we didn’t change our name. As you might imagine, I went into a panic mode. Everything we owned had our Driven 24/7 logo on it – our clothing, the truck we drove, all of the CDs and DVDs we sold, T-shirts, our web site – everything. Just when things seemed to be going my way, here was yet another curveball being thrown at me.

“I contacted my attorney right away. After checking into the situation, he determined that the person had in fact trademarked a name with ‘24/7’ in it. Although we could have fought it in court, because ‘24/7’ is a widely used term, we decided it wasn’t worth the time, energy and money it would take to do so. Nicole and I weighed all the options and decided to change the name of our show to Driven with Pat and Nicole.

“The next few months were grueling for us. We had to change our web site. We could no longer sell our DVDs. We had to replace all of our clothing and get the truck repainted. We lost a lot of revenue during that time, but we learned a valuable lesson in business. If you have a logo or company name that you want to use, get it trademarked! That experience took a lot of our attention and in many ways took the focus off what we were doing. But we got through the crisis. We refocused and kept pushing and finished the year on a very strong note. If there was any consolation to the incredible headaches the trademark dispute had caused us, we went to Canada several weeks after it happened and Nicole shot her 181-inch monster!

“During that first year of hunting and filming together, an amusing incident occurred while we were on an antelope hunt out West. Having grown up in Illinois, Nicole had never had much experience shooting a rifle. She had always used a shotgun for deer, and most of her shots had been less than 100 yards. Now she was trying to shoot antelope at distances out to 350 yards and she missed her first three shots at three nice antelope bucks. It was almost comical watching her try to shoot an antelope with a rifle at those distances, although she certainly didn’t think it was very funny at the time.

“Prior to the hunt, we had never given this a second thought. Nicole is a natural at shooting a shotgun or muzzleloader, but now these long-range shots were really playing mind games with her. On the fourth buck of the afternoon, we snuck up to the top of a little hill where she took two shots and missed again.

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