Oakland Panthers Football IFL vs FFL Name War – Oakland Panthers FFL Statement
ONN – Oakland Panthers Football IFL vs FFL Name War – Oakland Panthers FFL Statement
The Indoor Football League Oakland Panthers featuring Marshawn Lynch and Roi Choi and Scott McKibben, launched six days ago with a press conference held at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena formerly known as Oracle Arena.
Trouble is the Oakland Panthers Freedom Football League representatives didn’t know about it.
Now, in this update exclusive to Zennie62Media, Christianne Harder, The Oakland Panthers FFL Media Relations And Digital Media Representative, issued this statement:
Hi Zennie,
Thanks for reaching out. We were as surprised as you were when we heard that there was going to be an indoor football team in Oakland, and that they were calling themselves the Oakland Panthers. As you know, we have been promoting the name “Oakland Panthers” for about a year and a half now on the FFL website, in interviews, and social media channels. Based on that, we have what is called a Common Law trademark. We hope that this is a simple oversight on the part of Mr. Choi, and we have informed him that we will protect our brand and rights; we have asked him to change the name of his team immediately to eliminate any further market confusion. Hopefully this can be resolved quickly, and we can move forward, growing the football community in Oakland.
That tone clearly reads like legal battle lines have been established. And in this update, two of the leaders of the Indoor Football League (who don’t want to be named) want answers. One said “Who’s this Roy Choi?”
Who Is Roi Choi?
According to his bio at his firm Knighted Ventures, Roi Choi is…
Knighted Partner Roy Choi was one of the pioneers of the California player/dealer industry, co-founding Network Management Group over 20 years ago. Roy helped grow the company to be the largest TPPPPS group in California, with over 1000 employees and an unmatched roster of the largest casino clientele. At the height of its success, Roy stepped away to pursue a career in music production and film distribution. He went on to form Mars Entertainment, a film distribution company, and also became CEO of Kollaboration, the largest non-profit Asian American talent show in the nation. Roy also established the KCM Agency, a marketing firm servicing clients such as Hyundai and Verizon.
It was then that he met his partner Jieho “G” Lee, a Harvard Business School graduate who worked in both the corporate and entertainment worlds. G had just completed shooting his feature film, “The Air I Breathe”, starring Forest Whittaker, Andy Garcia, Kevin Bacon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Brendan Fraser. G also had a distinguished career in the finance world working for boutique private equity funds such as Blue Horizon Capital and Concord Capital Group. Additionally, he served as head of International Business Development for Roll Global – where he oversaw global brands such as Pom Wonderful.
With great excitement, Roy and G decided to form Knighted Ventures: Roy brought the industry knowledge and a relentless passion for pushing the envelope in gaming possibilities; while G came in with corporate best practices and a vision for best-in-class leadership, training and business development programs. Together, they formed Knighted under the belief that they could offer something that the gaming world had never seen before: a company devoted to expanding gaming possibilities and revenue, while developing inspiring young leaders committed to servicing their clients, team members, and the communities they lived and worked in.
It also clear that Mr. Choi intends on squatting on the name “Oakland Panthers” as he’s already published, or had someone install, a new Wikipedia page.
Stay tuned.
Oakland News Now Note: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest version of an experimental Zennie62Media mobile media video-blogging system network. This is a major part of our new approach to the production of news media. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and also seek interested content and media technology partners.