On November 25, 2008, a U.S. District Court issued a final judgment that James Shyun’s registered trademark on “Eight Step Preying Mantis” and all other variations (including Eight Step, 8 Step, Babu Tanglang, and Eight Step Praying Mantis spelled correctly) was improperly granted to him. The court ordered that the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to cancel the trademark registrations.
To prevent any rumors or miscommunications about this judgment, I wanted to share some background information about how this judgment came to be:
Originally, Grandmaster Wei’s students did not interfere with James Shyun’s martial arts business in the U.S., because they knew him and were happy for his success. Even after James Shyun began claiming to be the “sole inheritor” of 8-Step from Grandmaster Wei (which, for the record, is not true) and asking his former classmates to play along, they went along in the interests of keeping the peace and because they were just happy to see someone promoting 8-Step outside of Taiwan.
Things probably would have continued this way indefinitely. However, last Spring, when Mr. Ernie Wu hosted a reunion in of Grandmaster Wei’s students in Houston, Texas, James Shyun threatened to sue anyone who might attempt to teach 8-Step at the event. As offensive and arrogant as this threat may have been, Mr. Wu is a very nice, patient person and probably would have let it slide to preserve his friendship with James Shyun. However, after a number of Grandmaster Wei’s former students talked it over, they decided that they could no longer allow James Shyun to hold the trademarks he had filed. The reason is simple: After all of Grandmaster Wei’s students have died, there will be no one left to bear witness to the fact that James Shyun is not the “sole inheritor” of 8-Step and has no special role in the 8-Step community at all that would warrant him registering any sort of trademark to that effect. If that were to happen, the students of Grandmaster Wei’s former students would have no defense against James Shyun’s bullying tactics or those of his students or students’ students. The future of the entire 8-Step community would be threatened irrevocably at that point. So, they decided to file a law suit to correct this falsehood once and for all. The suit was filed in the Summer/Fall of 2008 and a final judgment made in November.
One other point of clarification: There have been Internet rumors here and there indicating that James Shyun had previously sued someone for infringing on his right to “own” 8-Step, and won that lawsuit. To my knowledge, there have never been any such lawsuits. I believe those lawsuits were all fabrications of someone’s imagination. If someone disagrees, please point me to the specific court and any publicly available records indicating such a lawsuit ever took place.
Hopefully this provides clarity, prevents rumors from spreading, and puts this issue to rest once and for all.