Cold Steel threatening custom makers?

[J. Hoffman]

I've heard CS is sending letters to custom knife makers claiming they own the trademark on San Mai, and that only they can use the phrase. I looked at the trademark, and it appears they own the trademark to their San Mai logo with 3 bands behind it, but I don't see that they own the words themselves. Anyone else heard this?

 

[KenHash]

That's interesting. Haven't heard it but would like to see where it goes. The term "San Mai" which is Japanese for 3 layers or 3 slices certainly wasn't invented by CS. Hon (true) San Mai is one of the 9 or so traditional blade lamination styles and terms like "warikomi" and "kasumi" have been around for a long long time in Japan. But I can not deny that Cold Steel "introduced" the term to the US knife market in the early 1980s. Clearly the San Mai III logo is trademarked. I personally doubt that CS has exclusive rights to use the term "San Mai".
SOG Knives sells the Vulcan Tanto manufactured by G.Sakai using a VG10 core laminate, and they freely use the term "San Mai". On the other hand, Fallkniven AB of Sweden which uses
a VG10 core laminate (among some other high end laminates) seems to deliberately avoid using the term "San Mai".
CS often takes or threatens to take actions even when the outcome is "iffy" at best so perhaps pondering over the the merits is somewhat meaningless. What is ironic though is that the
Custom makers are doing what Japanese bladesmiths have traditionally done whereas today for production knives the laminated steel is made at the Takefu steel mill and delivered.
Hope to hear further if true.