Media release - Friday 15 January 2010
Media release - Friday 15 January 2010
For immediate publication.
Snakeman busts Queensland imposter!
Australian snakeman, Raymond Hoser, has this week forced the deregistering
of a newly registered Queensland business using his trademarked business
name "Snakebusters".
Hoser's name "Snakebusters" has been used by him for decades
and become an established brand name for venomous snake removal and live
reptile shows, not just in Australia, but also globally.
As a result, Snakeman Hoser was stunned when he became aware that some
newly licenced snake handlers from Cairns had commenced trading using the
same name.
Snakeman Raymond Hoser's involvement with Queensland spans decades and
includes the discovery of and naming of numerous Queensland species including
the dangerously venomous False King Brown Snake (Pailsus pailsi)
and East Barkly Death Adder (Acanthophis woolfi) in 1998, and the
Northern Rough-scaled Snake (Tropidechis sadlieri) in 2003, found
commonly around Cairns and environs.
Newly licensed Cairns snake handler Corey Smits (calling himself "Corey
Wild") had registered the business name "Snake Busters"
late in 2009 and this week agreed to Hoser's request to deregister the
name.
Hoser today said, "The demand was made in a legal letter, and Mr.
Smits immediately agreed to use another name for his business. As a result,
there is no ongoing animosity or bad will towards him. I wish him all the best in his business ventures."
However Hoser also said "bearing in mind our business Snakebusters
are the dominant player in the Australian live reptile show business, and
that everyone in the reptile game knows me, I am stunned that anyone else
would have the audacity to try to trade under the names I've used for decades".
Hoser's company Snakebusters is alone in Australia in doing shows daily
with the world's top five deadliest snakes and widely sought by the biggest major events, shopping
malls and schools across Australia. This is because it's the only company dealing with
deadly snakes that has a perfect safety record, due to the fact that it
is also alone and first in the world with surgically devenomized (venomoid)
snakes, that have been in use for several years.
Just this week for example a Bundaberg Reptile park owner was carted off
to hospital as a result of a near fatal brown snake bite and such incidents
are common with other snake handlers across Australia, including at least
15 other serious snakebite incidents involving licenced snakehandlers in
the recent past.
Snakeman Raymond Hoser is not new to having to stop imposters using his
trademarks.
Last year he had to stop a newly licenced Gold Coast snake catcher Tony
Harrison from bootlegging his trademark "the Snakeman", something
Raymond Hoser's been known as for decades.
After initially refusing to stop calling himself "the snakeman",
Harrison agreed to stop calling himself "Snakeman", after his
legal people agreed that it could damage Hoser's established reputation
and his trademark rights.
The problem arose when Harrison erected a Search Engine Optimised (SEO)
website that identified himself as "the snakeman" diverting potential
customers away from Hoser and his established business.
In 2002, a West Australian film maker, Ed Punchard through his company
"Prospero", bootlegged the trademark Snakebusters to make a series
of poor-quality TV shows for cable TV, featuring a novice snake handler
attacking snakes with metal tongs. Hoser sued Prospero for breach of trademark
and was paid $39,500 in damages, after Punchard's lawyers had pled bankruptcy,
claiming net assets of about $327.
Prospero had also counter sued Hoser to deregister all three Snakebusters
trademarks but lost that case as well.
As a result, they now call their tong-wielding snake handler the "snake
crusader".
(This can all be most easily confirmed via a search of the IP Australia
trademarks database and history listings at:
http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/atmoss/falcon.application_start )
Today Hoser said, "with Mr. Smits, the trademark issue was solved
quickly and amicably and without need for litigation.
Our business employing seven people, does not appear to have been damaged
and we can get on with our conservation work. Unfortunately with the reptile
business, there are some bigger snakes in terms of people rather than the
snakes themselves. I found, Mr. Punchard was a tougher reptile to deal
with than any snake!"
In other recent cases, Hoser has had several sizeable cash settlements in his favor for IP and defamation related cases. However Hoser stresses that the amounts paid never compensated for the total damages or the time wasted in litigation and that he'd rather not have been sidetracked defending his good reputation and the business he's established.
Snakeman Raymond Hoser has discovered and named more snakes than any other
Australian in the last 20 years, and also has naming rights for the world's
longest snake the Reticulated Python from Asia.
He formally placed them in a new genus he named Broghammerus in
2004 as part of a then controversial taxonomic revision of the world's pythons.
Several later studies including one of the DNA in 2008 by a PHD student
Leslie Rawlings validated the move from the old genus "Python",
which now has the smaller Burmese Python as the type species.
Hoser's also written nine definitive books, including one known in the
reptile trade as "the bible", the 240 page "Australian
Reptiles and Frogs" published in 1989, and the controversial best-sellers,
Smuggled:The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife and Smuggled-2:Wildlife
Trafficking, Crime and Corruption in Australia, (published in 1993
and 1996) both of which were initially banned by the NSW Government and
then became best sellers when the courts ordered the bans lifted. The contents
of the books forced governments across Australia, including in Qld, WA,
and NSW, to rewrite laws overturning decades long bans on private reptile
ownership. The upshot of this has been a massive boom in popularity of
snakes and other reptiles as pets in Australia since then.
Further inquiries:
Snakebusters: 0412 777 211
or
03 9812 3322
A downloadable hi res. photo of Snakeman Raymond Hoser holding 14 deadly
snakes is on the web at:
http://www.snakebusters.com.au/ho1.jpg
It can be used for media provided the source "Snakebusters" is
acknowledged, the photo is not on-sold and that no false, misleading or
defamatory material be used with the image.
Non-urgent email inquiries via our bookings page at:
http://www.snakebusters.com.au/sbsboo1.htm
Snakebusters bookings and urgent inquiries phone:
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia:
(03) 9812 3322 or 0412 777 211
