Amazon.com licenses Minneapolis bookstore to use the Amazon nam
SEATTLE--November 4, 1999--Leading online retailer Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, the feminist bookstore in Minneapolis, today settled a legal dispute over the use of the Amazon name.
As a part of the settlement, both Amazon.com and Amazon Bookstore Cooperative will work together on certain steps to ensure that there will not be any confusion among the public about the association of the two companies. One of the steps includes Amazon Bookstore always referring to itself by its full legal name of Amazon Bookstore Cooperative.
Under the terms of the settlement, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative will assign its common law rights in the Amazon name to Amazon.com and Amazon.com will then give a license back to Amazon Bookstore Cooperative for use of the Amazon name. A lawsuit over the use of the Amazon name was filed by Amazon Bookstore Cooperative against Amazon.com on April 7 and was due for trial next year. With the settlement, the lawsuit will be dismissed.
"Both Amazon.com and Amazon Bookstore Cooperative are very good at providing the best shopping experience for their respective customers," said Bill Curry, Amazon.com spokesman. "This settlement allows an important, independent bookstore that has been a part of the strong tradition of independent bookstores in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for the past thirty years to continue serving the local community and beyond using a name that is well known. It also allows Amazon.com to continue focusing on providing the best shopping experience for its customers throughout the United States and the world."
"Now we can return to focusing on providing the products and services that only an independent bookstore like ours can provide" said Barb Wieser, president of Amazon Bookstore Cooperative. "While the lawsuit was at times difficult and both sides strongly advocated their positions, we do recognize and appreciate Amazon.com's good faith and willingness to work with us in resolving it. As a part of working with Amazon.com to resolve this dispute, we have learned about its long-standing commitment to diversity. Its policies of explicitly forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation and offering same sex benefits to all of its employees make it a leader in the corporate world in that regard."
Amazon.com can be found at www.amazon.com. Amazon Bookstore Cooperative is located at 1612 Harmon Place in the Loring Park neighborhood of Minneapolis and at www.amazonfembks.com. Amazon Bookstore Cooperative is an independently owned and operated bookstore which offers a diversity of books, gifts, music and art, by for and about women.
About Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com (Amazon.com, Inc. and its subsidiaries) is the Internet's No. 1 music, No. 1 video, and No. 1 book retailer. Amazon.com opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection with online auctions, toys, electronics, and free electronic greeting cards. Amazon.com lists more than 18 million unique items in categories including books, CDs, toys, electronics, videos, DVDs, and computer games. Through Amazon.com zShops, any business or individual can sell virtually anything to Amazon.com's more than 13 million customers, and with Amazon.com Payments, any seller can accept credit-card transactions, avoiding the hassles of offline payments.
Amazon.com seeks to be the world's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online. Amazon.com's All Product Search scours the Web to help customers find merchandise that is not available at Amazon.com, Amazon.com Auctions, or Amazon.com zShops, making Amazon.com the shopping destination to find anything.
Amazon.com operates two international Web sites: www.amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom and www.amazon.de in Germany. Amazon.com also operates PlanetAll (www.planetall.com), a Web-based address book, calendar, and reminder service. It also operates the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web's comprehensive and authoritative source of information on more than 150,000 movies and entertainment programs and 500,000 cast and crew members dating from the birth of film in 1892 to the present. Amazon.com also operates Amazon.com LiveBid Auctions (http://livebid.amazon.com), the leading provider of live-event auctions on the Internet.
Amazon.com has invested in leading Internet retailers that are improving the lives of customers by making shopping easier and more convenient: drugstore.com, an online retail and information source for health, beauty, wellness, personal care and pharmacy, at www.drugstore.com; Pets.com, the online leader for pet products, expert information, and services, at www.pets.com; HomeGrocer.com, the first fully integrated Internet grocery-shopping and home-delivery service, with operations in Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Southern California, at www.homegrocer.com; and Gear.com, which offers brand-name sporting goods at prices from 20 to 90 percent off retail, at www.gear.com. Amazon.com also has a minority interest in Della & James, the leading online wedding-gift registry, at www.dellajames.com.
This announcement contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, Amazon.com's limited operating history, anticipated losses, unpredictability of future revenues, potential fluctuations in quarterly operating results, seasonality, consumer trends, competition, risks of system interruption, management of potential growth, risks related to auction services, and risks of new business areas, international expansion, business combinations, and strategic alliances. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1998 and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 1999 and June 30, 1999.