Do I have the ability to stop them? No. I’ve spent well over $150k in legal fees on my fires.
Can I help you? Probably.
I don’t know exactly what you are facing or dealing with, other than what I need to say to defend MakerMade. But I’ve always said I’m happy to discuss (just not in public) and help where able.
There is no secret there is a long history of Maslow logo misuse created by Patrick – according to Adobe Illustrator authorship, the file metadata (and history of changes dating back to 2019), and our own evidence with attachment and metadata. This “AI template” (and the precursors to it) were used on MakerMade’s “Maslow” products and your Maslow logos date back to 2019. This post-dates the emails you publicly shared. The co-branded logos were everywhere, including on your website in the Community Garden and here and here and here and here. Happily plastered everywhere by Patrick and his “marketing team” (image from archive.org) and cleaned up by me.
When you first brought the issue to my attention (see ~October 2023 emails), I removed everything on the MakerMade website and all advertising I had control over at that time. Vendors or liquidators ran a few sales channels (Amazon, maybe a couple of others). In 2022/23, I was tied up in legal BS after the board terminated Patrick & Patrick’s numerous thefts of MakerMade’s IP and his own breaches of his fiduciary duties (this company being one of them, and I’m sure he stroked you hard about it). I was running MakerMade barely one day a week, and only to keep the brand/reputation alive. Towards the end of 2023, Amazon contacted us about a Maslow product logo on several products. We cited our own trademark infringement and demanded that Amazon remove the listing. All this communication is documented in writing with Amazon.
Effective January 1, 2024, the assets were legally transferred from the now-defunct Maker Made LLC to Makerhub LLC (my company) to partially offset the debt they owed me. After that transfer, we were approached by a Kinnamon cohort to purchase a swath of our own squatted trademarks and trade names. One or two of them included Maslow trademarks or tradenames. Again, I declined.
The only guy still standing behind the MakerMade brand is me. Patrick fcked a bunch of people and is playing the others like a fiddle. He’s been a two-faced operator for years. He manipulates his way through everything he touches and has nothing to show for himself. I can likely give you a dozen members in this forum that he’s screwed over (you can guess how he found them). He is the guy who will gaslight people with lies about MakerMade and BS to butter them up, only because in his mind, he thinks he’s hurting me/Chris/MakerMade.
Patrick was the original person behind your trademark mess, and I’ve been cleaning up his shit. And at the same time, he and Benson Garner are gaslighting you into whatever you want to believe from them. They’ve swindled $450,000 from me (before I took over the assets). In 2021, they fraudulently misrepresented MakerMade’s “decline” to the US Government to obtain a $200,000 COVID EIDL loan, and in 2022, they stole the R&D and misappropriated IP developed by MakerMade to their “new company” (Plus or Minus Inc aka True Creative). In 2023 they fired cofounders days before they were vested, didn’t pay them the $100k+ they owed them & failed to provide workers’ compensation for an injured employee. In 2024, they have swindled over $600,000 from “investors” … all in the attempt to create their failed, stolen CNC machine:
Aside from the above, there is an entire swath of information I can’t even discuss on public forums, but have every document to back up every claim I’ve made. I’m happy to help you, but you gotta tell me what you want and need (you have my email). I have been spending years cleaning up messes & recovering from losses. Makerhub/MakerMade is finally cash flow positive and in a very healthy growth position. I do not need any additional negativity and reputational damage now when things are looking bright.
Thanks,
–t.j.