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Asking your local retail stores to start carrying, steeped or having your favorite mystery reach out and kind of get in touch. If you're in Santa Cruz, come on by any of the Captain Cloud locations. We have it there for you. Basically, they're just doing their best to change a coffee in the street make your life more convenient with their proportion pre ground innovation show. Tell your friends because we're about, like the skateboard brand girl, the skateboard brand girl like what's their trademark? Yeah. I mean, they have the trademark for the word girl. They probably have a trademark for the word girl in the skateboard industry. Maybe,

but our trademark the classes related Thio. The coffee is related to a having a coffee

shop. Their trademark is may be related to having a skateboard and being a skateboard brand.

But then our merchandise trademark is not related to any specific in Class 25 is not related to any specific

in this has nothing to do with coffee. Yeah, Class 25 is a pair of fairly Yeah, purely apparel. Okay, where we're going with this, I'm gonna ask questions. You have more answers than Ideo, and hopefully this can function toe one get get me in the loop. So? So I can understand this better so we can speak about it better. But I'm also hoping that if someone else is going through something similar, I could show you that you're maybe not alone. Maybe we have some advice we're We're certainly not legal counsel, but we're going through things, too. Yeah,

maybe somebody has some advice for us. Yeah, maybe someone has some advice for us, and I am really looking forward to having I would love to have some constructive, constructive be back or a constructive feedback loop with the parties involved. So we'll keep the 1st 1 classy and see. See where it goes. If someone knows anybody, maybe they can. Maybe they can patch us into someone because it would be cool. All this just went away. Disappeared. Um, so we're being sued or yeah, we're being We're being sued is being sued the same as getting a cease and desist or the different parts of the same situation is one a step to the other.

Yeah. Different. Different ideas. Um, a seasonal assist. Like we got a cease and desist from bulletproof right for originally, like we had

Ah, coffee on our menu called bulletproof coffee. So we got a cease and desist from bulletproof coffee because when we opened, we had a drink that had coffee blended with grass fed butter and m c t oil. And we were totally mistaken. Inputting bulletproof Yeah, on the menu. That's obviously someone else's brand.

Yeah, we didn't have any, like, harm. Like

intent. No. Foul. Intense. Yeah. And they sent us a thing. And we said, Oh, Yep. We change that. Yeah, So

we did. So that's kind of a case of them Enforcing a trademark they have versus what Caterpillar is trying to do to us is to cancel our our trademark that we previously had applied for and been approved by the patent trademark

Office caterpillars. Caterpillar Inc. Yeah. A company that makes really large tractors correctly.

They I think, last year they sold $54 billion worth of heavy machinery and their stand. We got a letter from them. Ah, August 4th, 2018 letting us know that they were suing

us $54 billion. And that's just in one year, One year. So they're doing okay. It seems this is ridiculous. That so when we got the letter, the first thing that struck me was Wow, A company is doing $54 billion in a single year, actually has the bandwidth to go and find these frivolous things, dig them out and spend money. They're paying someone to talk to us. Yeah. Someone on their legal team is interfacing with us to try to get us to release the trademark. Too specifically. It's the word cat.

Yeah, Caterpillar. Ah, you know the inside? Yeah, I feel as the insect like they have the trademark for the abbreviation cat right, which in my mind, is the abbreviation for the word caterpillar, not the feline animal corrects, but yet they're trying Thio. And they're doing this to a number of companies which we could talk to in a minute where they're essentially systematically going after a number of smaller companies and trying to cancel those companies trademarks.

What do you think the reasoning is? I mean, it seems like they want to control every instance of the word cat. The cat is such a common word in the English language and specifically our kind of cat. The feline animal is an incredibly popular like cats or pop culture. I am. You see cats everywhere. It seems unreasonable. Thio Every cat, man,

it just, um And I've got a friend who, like his whole family, works for Caterpillar. And I was telling about this and he was just kind of appalled that caterpillar. The company feels the need as a $54 billion a year revenue company to go out and use lawyers to write for us. They're costing us tens of thousands of dollars for other companies they've cancelled or in the process of trying to cancel their trademark, too, just like small businesses. I don't really know what motivation you would have to try to, like, ruin right like this cos like our dream right and this and all of our employees and there are people out there who are essentially systematically trying to ruin people's small businesses. And it's just so crazy to me toe toe, interact with people

like that. The economies of scale at play here are really disappointing and kind of frightening because you can see how a company that does $54 billion in sales in the year has a lot of power. They have a lot of wiggle room, so let's take us and them. You've spent a good portion of your time since we received that letter. Working with our lawyer right EOE spend time fighting this thing to claim it. Hey, you have no right Thio, cancel the trademark we have that we applied for fair and square in the context of things that we produce. It is no. There's no intense to make anyone believe that were affiliated with Caterpillar Inc in any way. And you can see that by all everything that we produce that even just from the visuals that will use it's so clear where the cat comes from and the cat is a feline. Kat drawn the inspiration from our friend Julia Cat and Cloud. She drew the two The two little Buddies yet and that's our brand. So to see you, you're 1/3 of our main founder ownership team, right?

The business was started with myself, yourself and Jared, right? And a big role in our business is to continually push the business forward, to figure out new, interesting ways to help the people that work for us and help move our organization for yeah, and all of a sudden, you now have handcuffs on you, and you have special skills in the context of what we're doing, which we're building out two new stores right here. The person that manages the build out. You also managing green coffee buying which coffee is the main product that we say. And all of a sudden you have to spend a shit ton of your work week dealing with this.

Yeah, and it's crazy. And I mean, I almost thought it was like a mistake at first to wear, like our lawyer, actually realising kind of who caterpillars lawyers, where our lawyer has, like, sat arm boards and, like, committees and stuff with their lawyer And so, like, our

lawyer reached out to their Lord was like, Hey,

like, you know, this like a mistake. Like, why would you guys be suing like a cat and cloud coffee company related a caterpillar? In no way does our branding at all look like caterpillar that makes heavy machinery and asked, like just like this is ridiculous. And they're like, No, we're gonna We're pressing on with the suit, you know, potentially is gonna go to trial trial And yeah, and you know, we're in, like, the early You know, actually,

So what it's been in August, it'll be a year of working through that kind of the legal system on this. And like with a number of back and forths with them, Um, yeah, where I've had to spend time right as part of Discovery. Answering like, you know, 70 question in derogatory is that they've sent over and additional in Iraq a Tory's and requests for documents. And it's just ridiculous. Nobody is gonna confuse cat and cloud coffee for Caterpillar incorporated with their I mean, even their branding is like the little yellow triangle. And, you know, the capital letters cat if you if you go look at it, it's

How much money do you think we've spent on this?

Yeah, um I mean, we're definitely in the, like, thousands of dollars, and it's probably, you know, before it's done, is going 10 $20,000. It just depends. Like like cases like this. Ah can go years, um, of back and forth. And so you know, And that's that's why you know, we can talk about this in a minute.

But caterpillars like systematically, like sought out these small companies and sued them to cancel their trademark. You know, most small companies don't have a lot of money to fight. I think we're just I think we're kind of like fed up in like we don't want to be bullied by somebody that's that's like so much bigger than us with who isn't really in the right here. So it's like we're may be willing to try toe, you know, find the money somewhere to defend this because we really believe in it. But it's like it's still negatively impacts our business, and it's tough.

It's not a a drop in the bucket to where, If you're huge into raking and shit Fuck tons of money. Yeah, maybe 10 or $20,000 lawyer Bill is something that you write off is part of an expense report. Or you don't even after you don't even proven anybody, right? Yeah, We spent 20,000 bucks and legal is like, Yeah, cool. We spend that every day. It's no big deal, totally. But for us in the midst of doing these build outs and growing the company, $20,000 isn't something that we could just leave hanging and be like, Oh, no big deal. It was just it was just $20,000 crazy. That's a good percentage of of one of our build outs. Yeah,

our income for you, like over like number of months. Do you wantto how we were doing that year. But like it's yeah, it's definitely not an insignificant amount of money.

I mean, when we first opened, we were shy $35,000 which were raised on Kickstarter, which provided the money for us tow, payoff, the roaster, purchase that roaster and really get into play. And without that, we would be nowhere. So seeing someone just take 20,000 is really obnoxious to me, and I agree with you that on one end were like, This is total bullshit. This has There's no way we're gonna roll over on this one and I can see why a lot of people do, because you just simply don't have the money or you feel overwhelmed. There's three of us. I'm actually going to just say this in real time. I say there's three of us,

as in, there's three owners now we have other owners, and I'm not really sure how to address that, because when I say the word founder, like there's three founders. Whenever I hear someone say their founder, the implication to me is that they no longer have ownership, that they're like some sort of token for the company to stay ahead. There So in the context of this podcast that I say owners, I'm speaking about the founding owning because we have four employees. Owner. We have four employees owners. So maybe we'll talk about that tonight and a little get together. How to address that in the media at large. So there's there's three of us that are the head of this dragon. But if you were operating a business by yourself yeah,

imagine the amount of overwhelmed you're in just doing day to day operations, let alone having someone sue you. But the other thing is the name, the way that we came to the name and how much history the name has to us and how much it means to us. I can't even imagine. I can't even fathom letting it go right, especially

when we feel like we did what we needed to do right. We had we sought legal counsel to do what we felt like was the right thing to do to secure the trademark. So I don't I don't believe we did anything wrong. And then for some one toe who's that much bigger than us to come and like, like just essentially try to bully us out of, um, you know what we legally filed? It just

sucks. Yeah, it's like the grown up version of Internet bullying. Yeah, like, you know, trolled where? Yeah, you're getting trolled on Instagram or through social media. And now we have lawyers trolling us for our trade. Yeah, and it's just

fucked up because, I mean, I think about like, our vision right? And like our vision is to change the way people do business, right? And that's another reason why it's like we have to fight for this for us, because I don't want to be the example that just, like, rolled over for, like, a bully, like stealing your lunch money. It's just like we have to find a way to fight and for what we believe in and what's a big part of our culture and company and had it just bums me out that people on the other side of that are just essentially looking to ruin people's dreams and businesses.

I wish there was just like this bullshit button. You could submit paperwork to someone and they could hit this button quick judgment. We don't need to go to trial. Someone who just says, Okay, this is ridiculous. Ridiculous. This is this is out of hand. I'm pushing the bullshit button you can carry on. Have a good have a good time. Yep. And I think the levels, the levels of emotional disconnect that are happening or huge I don't know how big caterpillars legal

team is probably bigger

than our whole company, Probably bigger than our whole company. But I'm wondering who who in the chain of command is the person who sifts through the infinite space that is the Internet businesses on the Web and finds these instances and decides which ones to pursue because they don't pursue all of them.

Yeah, And it's like in our legal filings, which our public information like, we note that they have, you know, like I said, systematically found, you know, like I think, 7 to 10 small businesses and they're like working, you know, systematically to cancel each of their trademarks, including ours. But if it was really to protect their business in my mind, I would go after the biggest people first. Not the smallest people, right?

Because if you're really trying to protect some of your $54 billion in annual revenue. You would go after the people who are potentially infringing you in the biggest way. And but caterpillars not doing that like the thing that comes to my mind is there's Ah, there's a merchandise company that's Ah, Brandon Target called Cat and Jack Cat Ampersand. Jack were cat and cloud coffee. Loc Cat and Jack is certainly closer to Caterpillar. Then we are, and there's a huge clothing brand, but they're not suing Cat and Jack, and it's like Is, Are they not suing them? Because it's their own by Target and Target maybe has as big a legal team as they dio and they don't They're not really doing it for their own economic interest. They're just doing it toe like bully small companies that they think they can

push over. Yeah, it seems like they're just going after someone who's not going to put up a fight. Yeah, and they're betting that cool. 85% of these people that we threaten are just going to say I don't want any trouble. I don't have time to deal with this shit. Fine. And then there's a few like us that are gonna be gonna be sticky. And yeah, because Target owns that brand is their in store brand. So have fun with that. Yeah, that would be a fun. That'd be a fun legal battle, which I wish would happen. Not for targets sake,

but I'm I'm, like, pick on someone your own size. D'oh! Yeah,

And the fact that they're not leaves this whole idea of like, who they're suing just makes it that makes it feel that much more icky to me.

Yeah, it feels really gross because I'm sure someone who has no soul could look me dead in the eye and say cat and cloud LLC is a threat to our brand. You guys are taking away some of our potential revenue because people are mistaken. They're wrongly taking what you're doing and confusing it with what are do you know what? I can talk him so bad. I I'm so upset. I try to be well spoken, and emotions are getting the best of me. Ray,

I know that people are going to cat and cloud coffee and thinking they're gonna buy heavy machinery

there or they're buying a cat and cloud shirt and they think they're buying a Caterpillar share. Most of the merchandise that we produce is some derivative of the original drawing. Right. So it's generally a sketch of a cat, the animal and a cloud. The thing that's in the sky, the brains of lightning in the whole, the whole scenario.

Yeah. No cat know caterpillars in

there. Yeah, we haven't. We've never put a caterpillar on it, you know? So what do you do when this happens? You said discovery. Let's dig into that a little bit more. You are sending me list of things that you needed, Um, a picture of every piece of merchandise that we've ever created.

Yeah. And it's just a huge process. I mean, we got the original notice of their intent to take us to court to cancel our trademark. We filed a response, you know, kind of saying this is ridiculous. Um, they then come back with as part of, like, the discovery part of going to trial, Um is kind of the evidence collecting, um, you know, time. And so they come back with, um,

you know, a set of in derogatory sze which were, like, 70 You could be any number could be, could be any number of questions. Um, they come back with, um, requests for documents and requests for financial numbers and requests for essentially all the information related to any merchandise we're selling. Um, you know, we can then ask them for the same. Um, yeah. So that's kind of where we're still receiving their information on that front. And then they just ah,

essentially responded with further, um, in Iraq, a Tory's and admissions, um, that they are looking for us to answer, so it kind of goes back and forth. Uh, including like, um, there could be like depositions where they interview people. Um, yeah, and it's it's It's all this collecting of information in anticipation of, like, a trial.

Is there an ends to the amount of information that they can requests? No. No. Yeah, So it could be go on for pretty much indefinitely. That's interesting. So in cases like that, whoever has got more money and time basically gets to control

the situation. You have the most of it. I'm sure they have. You know, so many lawyers and so much money that you know, for them, it's not a big deal to fill it out to return it. But then there they can turn around and just file a document that asks for a ton of information and questions and stuff for like, you know, small companies like us to have to dedicate a significant amount of time to answering and, um, yet pulling together all the data and answering. And so it it's just interesting to see how this process and I mean, you hear it every day, right? It's like people with money could make things happen. But it's just like how this process is so stacked against, like, little Cos when they're facing big companies.

The thing that makes it feel really gross to me is that even if you break down the economics of what's happening and they have shit tons of money and shit, tons of legal counsel never ending supply of this if you If you take the amount of money, let's say there's one lawyer handling our case. Yep, on there in, if you take the amount of money that that person makes because lawyers are sheep, they're they're expensive to employ. And then you contrast that with the amount of using air quotes here, money that they hope to gain by somehow canceling our trademark or recouping losses that they think we're taking from them. You're paying the lawyer, Maur.

Oh, because the

number that they're gonna recruit from us is zero.

Because there's no confusion by anyone. No, I just I Yeah, that's why I mean, it's so you just scratch your head because, well, it

is the real purpose. Yes, and that makes me feel like they're just greedy savages who want to control everything. Yeah, and it really makes me sad. Yeah, total it. It's so depressing to me because big business isn't such a powerful position to shape the world that we live in. Yep, You can use your status as a giant, enormous business that makes billions of dollars to do all kinds of stuff. You can do good stuff. You can do bad stuff. You could be in different. And maybe I'm just living in a dream world. But I'd like to think that if Caton Cloud generated 50 some odd $1,000,000,000 of revenue every year, we wouldn't be running around suing smaller companies for frivolous things that we would actually be pumping a good amount of that money back into our own workforce,

but also doing things for the greater good, whatever that means, whatever that means to them. So I, uh, yeah, verbally processing out loud. I'm sorry, everyone listening, who feels like this is just random. But that's kind of the point of what we're doing here is we've talked about this in meetings and I'm just trying to understand the process

better. Yeah, and it's like, I am just curious how this fits in with, like, caterpillars values because, like, I'm sure they have a CEO and Jim, um, plebe? Yeah.

And he's also on the board of directors at Chevron. All right. And in no small cat. Yeah, but

I'm sure you have people that caterpillar who like really love and believe in what they do. And I just wonder if they know that their company is just kind of like singling out small businesses around the country to sue and trying to, like, make small business or ruin people's small businesses. If they know that, like, that's part of what they're like helping to dio. If, like, that's something that caterpillars doing in addition to, you know, trying to help farmers and provide equipment and I'm sure they have, like, vision and values and goals. And it's just a bummer just for those people who are working their toe maybe realize that their company is like, actually doing these things to wear their ex suing small businesses for no reason.

You imagine if our employees showed up and we had a staff meeting were like, Guess what? We're fucking suing all of these people. People who are ridiculous sum teeny tiny mom and pop shop on the corner

who were trying to, like, start their dream and like, create a world for their employees. And, yeah, if we were just, like, indiscriminately suing smaller businesses than us,

I fucking hope I never get to the point that I can't make the human connection between words on a page and the people behind those words. I'm sure someone in the office is looking There's fucking infinite number of businesses that have cat and, um and we're number 36 on a list of whatever. And they're like, OK, cool. We're going to get these guys and it's like, you know what? Fuck that. We're not just a name on a paper. This is the culmination of our existence and everything we believe it's not even a business. Captain Cloud is not just a vehicle to generate revenue now. It's a vision of a better world. It's what we couldn't find anywhere else. The only reason we're here is because we had this insane vision, the and we weren't satisfied. And we wanted to provide something more for ourselves and everyone else around us. And you get reduced to just being a bunch of letters on a paper and that super sad and it's super cold sores. And I I I start for me to wrap my head around somebody. It's

doing that mind set on the other side.

I mean, did you see this? You worked in finance. You were in a corporate world. You've probably been around some cold cats. Have you seen stuff like this before,

man? I mean, most of people that I saw were actually probably doing things for reelection. Ah, Mick reasons, right? I mean, a lot of you know that ah, finance or Wall Street stuff is kind of really tied Thio how this is gonna affect you economically. And that's where I'm sure, like any, like finance or wall street person who was looking at that. Look at this would look at it just like you are and be like, look like the time and effort that you're spending here like is not gonna generate a return for you. So it's like

So even if you even if you wanted to, the numbers would tell

you that this is the wrong. Yeah, I think anyone that would look at the numbers would say yours is just wasting your time.

You could make more money somewhere else, doing literally anything else doing anything else.

Like, how do you not take this money and yeah, and use it first for some good that like caterpillars trying to do

in the world. I wonder if there's some end of the month type stuff. You know, people say by a car on the end of the month because a sales person has a quota or you're gonna get pulled over at the end of the month by the cops because they need a certain tickets. Whatever all these urban legends are, if their lawyers have a quota, we need to get 15 losses going in the next

month. Yeah, I don't know. Somebody out there? Yeah, he's worked with law, firm like that. Let us know because it's again. Yes, it's too bad that again, like real people are just reduced to like like you said, Like just inhuman names on a legal document because again, yes, just gross.

And I look a caterpillar and obviously the generator scent of revenue. But the equipment the manufacturer makes me think of working class, Yeah, it makes me think of people who work hard to earn a living in it. The association that I would probably have is, you know, some sort of champion for the people, and this is showing them to not be that at all. It's the exact

opposite. Yeah, they're like looking to erect the dreams of the like, working class people who are trying to make something, you know, for their families and for their employees and the neighborhoods that were

in like, yeah, and it makes me think this stuff that they manufacture is not toe help. People build and create great things. It's just tow line, their pockets. And that sucks.

Yeah, and yeah, and that they're selling their like, some of these products and then taking that money and using it to sue people that have nothing to do with their actual line of business. And yeah, because I mean, hey, it's like I'm sure you don't. If there was a company making really cheap industrial equipment and their name was, you know,

millipede had a Miller, you know, it's like, Cool.

I totally understand why you ah youto sue them to stop them making, like, cheap reproductions of what you make or something. But just for them to sue us, it has no similar analogy or how it could be beneficial to them in any

way. I mean, I think we're working through it in our own in our own special way now. And it's been really stressful mostly for you. Yeah, for me, it's been emotionally annoying, but you're the one that's been physically doing all the work. So my general counsel, you got a lawyer on set, we got check, does all the other set up he can handle. It's fine. No big deal. Chuck me cat. Yeah, check me.

Caterpillar is gonna be chill if anybody wants to help. The coolest thing that you can do is to just share this podcast. We're figuring out a good way to tell the story the honestly, because we really feel a little bit powerless yet. And maybe the only power that we have is in people who feel like our allies. And that's everyone who's listening here. And I really don't want to turn anything into some really gnarly shitty hate campaign. You know, it'd be so easy. I'm disappointed for sure. I'm disappointed in Caterpillar, but I don't want to come on the party's be like, Fuck these guys pull. Yeah, great people that work there who were like

just doing there Who not not a legal side, but like great people were there like thinking they're making equipment and, like, we're gonna help farmers. And

exactly so if if you know anybody, if you can pass this on, if you can share it, If you could drum up a little bit of noise, that's great. We love to make this all go away, obviously without Maur and more and more money and time, it obnoxious energy for something that's totally frivolous. So that's the special happy edition of the cloud podcast. Share this one with friends. Let me let me know what you think, right, Right. And give us a shout out on social media. We appreciate your

support and totally I mean, just like Chris, I really respect how a lot of your podcast videos, right? It's not always, like, happy and fun, like you share something like the difficult things you're going through. And I think we want to do that, you know, as a company, we've kind of done that from the beginning, sharing, you know, some of the process we've gone through to start the company and challenges we've had. So, yeah.

I mean, this is just, like, really a real thing that's happening to us, and, you know, we're gonna share it. And, um yeah, this is This is a

shitty part of real life. We'll keep you updated and thank The good news is, Chuck gained a few pounds. I was looking a little thin there. L b Z. Now, now he's almost back to the way. I feel good. Yeah. Things were looking up. Will do. Thanks for coming over and talking, dude. Always. All right. See you guys later.