My agent Kings was moving very slowly, but the problem was the Patent Office, their slow ways, their slow system, and for some queer reason Chrysler who didn't seem that concerned to get a quick resolution. I can only think that it did not make any difference to them if it took a year, two years or five years before they resolved if they could register the Trade Mark VIPER. For in the meantime they could just merrily carry on using it, which is exactly what they did.
I, as the person with the legal right to it, could do nothing to stop them using it as at that time I did not own it on paper, and similarly with Busbridge, I could not stop him either. So from the end of 1991 here he was merrily advertising Vipers and doing me out of profits with every sale he made of kits and the occasional car.
Chrysler were thick as thieves with Busbridge and they were saying that they would go ahead with their application to register and would use Busbridge as their witness to their belief that I did not own it. I felt that the Patent Office were bending over backwards for Chrysler at every turn, and they were no doubt scared of the big time lawyers that Chrsler could use to make all their arguments. Certainly Chrysler seemed to use every trick in the book to prevaricate, and
to ask endlessly for extensions of time, which they were always given.
The fight with Chrysler took SIX YEARS, with the final hearing date in February 1998, and my legal action in opposing Chryslers Registration started in February 1992. I will not bore the reader with an in depth and blow by blow account of everything that went on and was said. Mainly because this is irrelevant to my main fight with the thief Busbridge. Only to say once more that the inordinate time it took was as I have said, down to the slowness of the Patent Office over everything they did, and Chrysler doing their best to slow things. However one thing I ought to mention is that Chrysler did start to ask if I wanted to sell the Mark. At first they offered a paltry sum of around £30,000 and later on they upped this to around over double that at £66,000. I told Kings to accept this, but after doing so true to what Yanks are about, we heard no more.
Chryslers so called evidence all hung on them trying to prove that I had abandoned the name at the cessation of business of BRL in September 1989. In fact ALL their evidence was merely of compilation of copies of advertising by Busbridge from that date onwards. By now they had stopped trying to say they manufactured the VIPER from as far back as 1988. They also made statement in which they accused me of forging the agency agreement between me and them dated in September 1989. They accused me of never having owned the Mark and in anycase of abandoning it when BRL closed. Of course they conveniently ignored that from September 1989 they had been my agents and had sold the VIPER for me and that their early adverts when I was still around and before my going to Winterthur, which specifically said that the sale of the VIPERS was "Now under new management" which does not mean under new "OWNERSHIP" So I went into this hearing feeling Quite confident.
I must mention that Busbridge in the early days did two things. Firstly he too put in an opposition to Chryslers Registration, but as he was allying himself with them anyway, he let this slide away. Also in late 1992 he also applied to register the Mark himself. In this he jumped in before me as I had instructed my agent Kings to put in a registration for me in early Feb 1992, and even paid him the fee to do it. Inexplicably he never did do so, and his excuse was that it was not that important as If I won against Chrysler his application was irrelevant as I had prior use to him, as with Chrysler. This made good sense to me and I accepted that, but you will see that this was either a monumental blunder, or the Patent Office made a blunder by not taking this fact ever into consideration, as you will see later on.
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