Cooperstown
A California baseball equipment manufacturer called Diamond Sports is trying to get a baseball bat maker in Cooperstown to stop using the word diamond on its specialty bats.
Earlier this week, Cooperstown Bat Co., which was founded in 1981 and makes high-end bats out of maple, ash and birch, filed a lawsuit against Diamond Sports in U.S. District Court in Albany.
The suit is an attempt by Cooperstown Bat Co. to get a judge to rule that the company is not in fact violating any trademark rules by using the term diamond on some of its bats.
Cooperstown Bat Co. makes a bat used by professional baseball players called the Pro Diamond, which has a special diamond shaped ink mark that indicates the slope of the grain of the wood.
The ink mark complies with a 2009 Major League Baseball rule that was designed as a safety measure. A bat with a straight slope of the grain is less likely to shatter and break and injure the player or a fan.
“Cooperstown applies a signature ink dot to all its maple and birch bats,” the company says in its lawsuit. “Cooperstown’s signature ink dot … is diamond shaped.”
Documents filed in the case by Cooperstown Bat show that Diamond Sports asked it to settle the dispute out of court by abandoning the use of diamond in any of its products and to destroy any bats with the diamond name in it.
Diamond Sports, which makes baseballs, softballs and other types of baseball equipment and is based in Santa Ana, Calif., has also asked Cooperstown Bat Co. to withdraw its trademark application for the name Pro Diamond that was made in June 2015 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Cooperstown Bat has refused and filed the lawsuit on Feb. 24 to settle the dispute in court.
Diamond Sports did not immediately respond to a request from the Times Union for comment.
“Diamond would prefer to resolve this matter amicably, if possible,” Diamond Sports’ attorney Tara Martin said in a Feb. 8 letter to Cooperstown Bat Co.’s attorney Susan Farley of Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti in Albany. “However, Diamond will pursue all available remedies available to it, should Cooperstown continue its use of the confusingly similar Pro Diamond mark in commerce.”
lrulison@timesunion.com • 518-454-5504 • @larryrulison
