Ken Biberaj Says Mattel Attacking Him Over Podcast Name

TMZ

Ken Biberaj ain't giving up his name for anyone ... even toy giant Mattel, who he says is overextending its reach in order to monopolize the "Ken" moniker.

Transcript

00:00how did Mattel reach out to you when did they reach out to you and why you must have thought

00:07this was a joke when you were reading it yeah it's all pretty surreal right so we started

00:12coffeewithken.com as a podcast thought leadership series at the beginning of the pandemic about five

00:17years ago and we take it really seriously we've hosted governors and ceos and cultural leaders

00:22the apollo theater and we thought it'd be a great idea to have a trademark for coffee with ken

00:27because we're taking this pretty seriously and when we filed the trademark we got preliminarily

00:31approved by the trademark office and on the last day of potential objection Mattel came out of

00:37nowhere and objected to us registering the trademark because they thought ken should be theirs and

00:43theirs alone and that we shouldn't be able to register our podcast on it so really it's a

00:47trademark dispute where they think they should control and own anything related to the name ken

00:52which you know ken's a special name i'm excited to be named ken but like 750 000 kens in america and

00:58this idea that a big company could just swoop down and stop us is kind of shocking i didn't believe it

01:04at first and you go through this cycle of grief of like oh my god i should just give up and then we

01:08kind of dusted ourselves off we looked at the case and it really doesn't feel like they have merit it

01:13feels like true overreaching that they're pushing the limits and they're just trying to kind of box us out

01:18and intimidate us and you know we're excited by what we created and we're going to keep having

01:22coffee and keep having conversations and you're and you're not going to change your name i take it

01:26either so yeah so it's a pretty uh obvious thing that we're we're doing a pretty sophisticated series

01:32here we're interviewing pretty important folks and talking about big issues i mean we're talking

01:36about things from from mental health to military families to national security right like we're leaning

01:42into this idea of like sitting down having a cup of coffee and having conversation you know it's an

01:47amazing thing we're excited what we've created and and hopefully you know mattel just backs off and

01:52just lets us do what we're doing are you prepared to get proof from your your parents that um they did

02:00not name you after the doll because if there's some evidence that they did actually name you you know

02:06they were inspired by the doll they might have a case here i mean when my family immigrated from

02:11albania i don't think the first thing they thought was like you know we should name our kids after

02:15after dolls uh but you know we're willing to have that conversation with them um we started this

02:20podcast five years ago it was before the movie and i think just on the merits to your point right like

02:26hopefully this is something we could just kind of move past um i've offered i'd love to interview

02:30the ceo of mattel or or you know brian gassing or barbie i mean let's let's move on let's come

02:36together let's have a cup of coffee we could work this out

02:38you

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