One of the Biggest Mistakes in Mountain Bike History

A few months ago (MBA, November 2019) we asked some well-known mountain bikers to share some of their biggest mistakes with our readers. Charlie Kelly, who founded the world’s first mountain bike company with his friend Gary Fisher, recently recalled one of his biggest mistakes and reminded us of it. Here’s Charlie’s tale about one of the biggest mistakes in mountain bike history:

“Forty years of mountain biking includes plenty of mistakes, but the one that comes to mind was the time I hired the wrong trademark attorney.

“Gary Fisher and I had rented a garage where we planned to build bikes on frames supplied by Tom Ritchey. We chose for our company name and the name of our product ‘MountainBikes.’ We filed a ‘fictitious business name’ with the county and opened a commercial checking account under that name.

“Mountain Bikes sounded catchy. We figured we could probably sell 15 or 20 each year. (Another big mistake was not understanding how huge the sport would be.)

“There were two trademark attorneys in the Marin County phone book, and with no other criterion, I chose the one that was the shortest bike ride away. We paid him $125 to file our trademark. We probably should have saved the money.

“A few months after filing, our attorney got a letter back from the Commerce Department about the trademark, asking whether these bikes were specifically made to be used in the mountains. The attorney answered in the affirmative, and our trademark was denied.

“It turns out that you can’t trademark a description, such as ‘red car.’ By stating that our bikes were made specifically for mountain riding, our attorney cost us ownership of our company name. The proper answer, which we had paid the attorney $125 to know, was, ‘It’s a bicycle. Ride it anywhere you want to.’

“For a couple of years, we bluffed the entire industry, because no one else knew our trademark was denied. Because the bicycles we were making were being copied all over the bicycle industry, a major publication ran a contest to decide what to call this new kind of bicycle other than ‘mountain bike.’ The winner was ‘all-terrain bicycle,’ which is such a mouthful that no one ever used it. In addition to contributing the design that launched the sport, Gary and I named it—by mistake.”

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THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO GET MOUNTAIN BIKE ACTION