Entrepreneur Media Inc. this month settled its lawsuit with San Francisco-based
Allbusiness.com Inc. and former Entrepreneur employees.
Irvine-based Entrepreneur sued AllBusiness.com, which is headed up by for-
mer Entrepreneur executive and editor Rieva Lesonsky, over the naming of Allbusiness.com’s Franchise 300 ranking system.
Entrepreneur alleged the Web site violated its trade-mark of the Franchise 500 name, which ranks the largest franchise business-es annually.
New York-based Dow Jones & Co., parent to Allbusiness.com and part of News Corp., was also named in the dispute.
Under the terms of the settlement,
Allbusiness.com is forbidden from using the Franchise 300 name or anything similar for its under-development list.
Also part of the settlement: Allbusiness.com’s franchise list will now come out in February after Entrepreneur’s annual list; it was originally slated for this November.
Entrepreneur magazine’s Franchisee 500 will come out in January as planned.
Other terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
“It was settled to our satisfaction,” said Peter Shea, president and publisher at Entrepreneur.
In other Entrepreneur legal news, the magazine publisher settled its lawsuit with New York-based Ernst & Young LLP.
Ernst & Young filed a complaint last July against Entrepreneur that alleged that the magazine infringed upon Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” trademark.
The lawsuit was a twist: Entrepreneur is known for suing anyone who it believes remotely infringes on the magazine’s name.
Under the terms of the settlement, Ernst & Young will continue to host its Entrepreneur of the Year award and Entrepreneur will host its Entrepreneur Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year contest.
“Cooler heads prevailed and it basically ended up where we thought it would end up,” Shea said. “Anytime you can settle something with-out spending half a million dollars is a good deal.”
Cheese Maker Sponsoring Soccer
Oregon-based Tillamook County Creamery Association has tapped Fountain Valley’s Latin Fusion Group to help market its cheese to Hispanic families.
The advertising agency is connecting Tilla-mook with its target audience by sponsoring youth soccer leagues. The shop specifically signed a deal with Fullerton-based Cal South Youth Soccer, which has 100,000 players throughout Southern California, according to Rafael Oscal, owner of Latin Fusion.
“Tillamook wanted to approach the majority of soccer leagues and Cal South is the one that brings together the most in one place,” Oscal said.
The cheese maker was at Cal South’s Los Angeles F & #250;tbol Circuit, handing out cheese and other giveaways.
Cal South seems to be the place for companies looking to tap into the Hispanic and youth soccer markets.
Cal South sponsors include Nike Inc., Best Western International Inc. and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.
“As budgets have gotten tighter, agencies can’t go and throw their own grassroots event to build the brand and swallow the cost,” said John Weinerth, chief executive at Cal South.
PR Firm Picks Clients
Mission Viejo-based Maples Communi- cation Inc. has been named the agency of record for Irvine-based Tech Coast Works LLC.
Tech Coast was one of the first incubators to be created by the Orange County Business Incubation Network, a public benefit initiative of the University of California, Irvine. Tech Coast was established to help commercialize the inventions coming out of UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, as well as those of Southern California inventors.
Maples Communication, which specializes in technology public relations, will be working with businesses in the incubation stage at Tech Coast.
“These guys are engineers and so we plan to help them understand what the market is like and the different avenues to get their message out,” said Bob Maples, president of Maples Communication.
The company will be using traditional public relations as well as digital media PR to help companies coming out of Tech Coast build awareness in the marketplace.
“The goal is to start out with a little bit, and as they grow, they will bring us on board to go full time on the account,” Maples said.
The public relations agency launched a digital media group focusing on social marketing Web sites and strategies in October. The in-house group headed by Roger Kuo and Ian Chin will develop and manage clients’ online and social media programs.
Maples Communication clients also include Irvine-based Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., part of Toshiba Corp., and Aliso Viejo-based Networks in Motion Inc.
