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MONSTER CABLE

By WW Editorial Staff

MonsterVintage.com occupies two floors in one of the Pearl District's last unpolished industrial warehouses, where the 3-year-old company sifts through massive crates of used clothes in search of gems. Much as the Rogue Desk thinks it insane to pay $250 for a '70s rock T-shirt, the business Victor Petrucci and Cathy West named after their cat in 2001 is a relatively modest concern. The couple has two part-time employees; the biz grosses about $200,000 a year.

MonsterVintage's humble scale only makes its treatment at the hands of Goliath rogue Monster Cable all the more despicable. The San Francisco electronic-components company--which deals in coaxial cables, car audio gear, cell-phone handsets and the like, raking in $300 million annually--is suing MonsterVintage for trademark violation.

Monster Cable makes a hobby of such suits. It's gone after the Discovery Channel for its show Monster Garage, Bally Gaming's Monster slot machine and a novelty shop with the web domain name monster.biz. (So far, they haven't sued Monster.com, the jobs site.)

"They're just into strong-arm tactics," says Petrucci. "They just try to instill fear in people, and people just give up their business names."

Petrucci says that before suing, Monster Cable tried to get him to pay $1,000 and 1 percent of MonsterVintage's business to keep using the name. The MV owners plan to represent themselves, and they hope for a jury trial. They may get some free legal help from law students volunteering for the nonprofit Electronic Freedom Foundation. Monster Cable's spokesman declined to comment.

Petrucci spent a week in early October driving around San Francisco in a Ryder truck mounted with giant signs publicizing the case. In a city where Monster Cable just controversially paid $6 million for naming rights to Candlestick Park, Petrucci says he received many a thumbs-up. It's a comfort, he says, if a small one.

"I haven't been able to eat or sleep because of this," he says. "We'd like to hire more people and expand our business, but we can't because of this delusion of theirs."

For more on the case, see www.monstervintage.com .

WWeek 2015