Greg Ginn has lost his lawsuit against members of FLAG and Henry Rollins, Spin reports. The suit, filed back in August, alleged that the FLAG name and related imagery infringe upon the Black Flag trademark, of which Ginn claimed ownership. Interestingly, Ginn did not actually file for trademark registration for Black Flag-related marks until June 2013, a year after Keith Morris and Henry Rollins claimed ownership of the marks in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The suit also alleged that when Chuck Dukowski sued Ginn in 2007, the parties settled and as part of the settlement, Dukowski disclaimed any ownership of Black Flag-related marks. The court's findings are as follows:



(1) the court found that SST had no rights in the trademarks;

(2) Ginn seemed to have no individual rights in the Black Flag trademarks;

(3) even if either had had any rights in those marks, they had abandoned those rights through a failure to police the mark for nearly 30 years;

(4) the defendants' claim that the Black Flag assets were owned by a statutory partnership comprised of various former band members - even if these members only consisted of Henry and Ginn, based on (a) accepting Ginn's argument that he never quit and given that there is no evidence or allegation that Henry ever quit - has merit;

(5) that even if the plaintiffs had some trademark claim in the marks, there was no likelihood of consumer confusion between Black Flag and Flag given the ample press coverage over the dispute; and

(6) the trademark application and registration that Henry and Keith made was done in good faith (e.g. not fraudulently) - and is thus not necessarily subject to cancellation - given that they understood their actions to have been done on the part of the Black Flag partnership (see No. 4, above)

As you can see above, the judge weirdly ruled that Rollins never actually quit Black Flag, a band he hasn't been in since 1986.

UPDATE 1:30 p.m. ET: Rolling Stone reports that Ginn has simply been denied a preliminary injunction, which means the lawsuit will continue but that he cannot stop FLAG from their activities as of right now.