Random notes: May 4, 2013.

I feel sure I’ve written before about the Feds and their effort to shut down the Mongols Motorcycle Club by…seizing their trademarks. Because, of course, not having a logo will deter members of the Mongols from engaging in criminal activity, and they’d never think of something like adopting a new logo, or doing without. After all, how can you make meth without a snazzy logo?

Oddly, though, I can’t find that post. But by way of Reason‘s “Hit and Run”, I have discovered a couple of updates:

  1. The Feds first effort to seize the Mongols trademarks failed. Badly.

    Loy and Alan Mansfield, an attorney with the San Diego-based Consumer Law Group of California, successfully challenged the Justice Department’s last effort to seize the Mongols’ trademark through the tool of asset forfeiture. Citing the government’s “unlawful action based on an ungrounded and unsubstantiated legal theory,” a federal judge also ordered the Justice Department to reimburse the attorneys $253,206.

    So not only did the government not get what they were looking for, they have to pay out a quarter million dollars worth of taxpayer’s money and clean up the garbage.

  2. Typically for the Federal government, if it doesn’t work, do it harder: they’ve filed to seize the trademark again.

In other news, I was considering writing an extended rant about the Statesman and their forthcoming paywall. But now I don’t have to: Lawrence has saved me the trouble, in a post with charts and graphs and words and all that good stuff. I commend it to your attention.

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