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Thursday, January 15, 2009
State Sued Over Use of 'Rail Runner'
By Lloyd Jojola
Journal Staff Writer
A Massachusetts company has sued to stop the state Department of Transportation and the Mid-Region Council of Governments from using the "Rail Runner" name.
"RailRunner N.A. has consistently been interested in reaching a settlement," said Mark Metzger, a spokesman for the company that deals with truck and rail transport. "But the reason for the filing of this lawsuit is that those efforts have been rebuffed."
The company also is suing for damages related to trademark infringement.
Operators of the New Mexico Rail Runner Express — the train's formal name — are taking issue with the claims.
"There's no fraud involved here, and we're not hijacking any company," said Lawrence Rael executive director of MRCOG, which manages the train. "We're going through the process that's provided by the government to apply for trademark applications."
The lawsuit names MRCOG and Rhonda Faught, the former state Transportation Secretary, as defendants. MRCOG had yet to be served with the complaint, Rael said.
According to the federal lawsuit filed last month in Boston, RailRunner N.A. Inc. was issued a RailRunner trademark registration in 2005 and it also owns a registration for the mark for other equipment. The company has used the trade name since at least August 2004 and the mark since at least January 1995, the lawsuit states.
RailRunner N.A. President and CEO Charles T. Foskett said Wednesday in a statement that the company had no choice to but to go to federal court.
"We are simply trying to protect our company against a bureaucracy that appears to be ignoring the law," he said in the statement. "The issues involved here were settled months ago, when the (federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board) ruled that RailRunner N.A. has the rights to this trademark — and the (council of governments) and NMDOT agreed to that ruling by declining to challenge it."
MRCOG sought a Rail Runner trademark about the time service first started, Rael said. Train service in the Belen to Bernalillo corridor began in 2006. Service expanded to Santa Fe last month.
"This (Massachusetts) company has not been happy with our request and did challenge it," Rael said. He said the federal board rendered a decision based on technical aspects of the application, not the case merits. He said officials are in the process of having a new application to be reviewed.
"We felt pretty comfortable that the differences, in terms of what we were delivering as a service, the geographic area where we were providing a service and the fact that we're a governmental agency, that all those issues separated us very clearly from a private business that's for-profit," Rael said.
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