Thread: Attention knife and razor makers

It seems that cold steel trademarked the term 'san mai' some time ago, and is now aggressively going after small knifemakers who use the term san mai to describe the construction of a knife. I have seen pictures of cease and desist letters that were sent out to independent smiths/

SAN MAI Trademark: Cold Steel Issues Open Letter to the Knife Community »

Personally I think this is an extremely underhanded thing to do because the term 'san mai' is generic in our industry. Apple trademarked 'apple' because it was a unqiue brandname in their market. What cold steel has done is equivalent to a fruit seller trademarking the generic name of a fruit, and then sending out C&D letters to other fruitsellers.

Because of the genericness, I doubt it would hold up in court if it ever got that far, but they could of course spend you to death long before you got to that point. Their trademark is registered in the US (I guess it could not hold up in Japan ) so it's of no concern to me, but I do think it is low to trademark the name of a construction method as a brand name. I'd boycott them but let's be honest, I have never owned anything they made, and doubt I would even without this mess. But I do have a good friend who bought cold steel knives for dirty use in the field, and showed him the above link. With a bit of luck he'll buy from a different brand in the future.

So if you are a US based smith, keep an eye on this to see if it affects you.