Internet warz: Ken Block v Gymkhana.com

Ken Block is waging a legal battle against the owners of the website gymkhana.com. That’s Josh and Matt Martelli, or Mad Media, and they also just happen to be the guys who directed and produced the first three of his Gymkhana videos.

Block first became aware of gymkhana.com website around the time Gymkhana Four was released and dismissed it as little more than a bit of a spat from Mad Media after they were no longer involved with Block Gymkhana videos (the reasons for that split are unclear). That all changed, though, when a colleague of Block’s was approached by Mad Media to advertise on gymkhana.com and he asked Block if he had anything to do with the site.

Up until this point Block’s colleague had assumed that gymkhana.com was officially associated with Block and/or DC Shoes (really, despite the lack of branding?). Anyway, this is what has prompted Block to sue the Martellis.

In an interview with Jalopnik Block explains his side of the story:

“With regard to the domain name, my experience has been that partners on projects who have been brought on in a work for hire situation like Mad Media was on these projects will sometimes acquire URL’s to help protect the people they are working for and then assign them to the brand owner.

“A colleague of mine that works at a car manufacturer hit me up, asking if I had anything to do with the website… He had no clue that neither myself, nor DC Shoes, were affiliated with Gymkhana.com, and that gave us major cause for alarm.

“After we and DC Shoes had worked so hard to build the Gymkhana brand, we were really upset to learn that Mad Media is wrongfully using the value in our brand and the mark Gymkhana to drive traffic to what’s nothing more than a very general motorsport blog so Mad Media can profit off our goodwill. It’s a classic bait and switch technique since the content on the site is not in any way catered to anything associated with me, DC Shoes, or the Gymkhana brand or our video series.

“What also upsets me about this, is that if Mad Media had approached me like a reputable media company with a well thought out and developed business plan for Gymkhana.com that made actual sense for helping to grow the Gymkhana brand, I would have been open to working with them on it. Instead though, they went completely behind my back and blindsided me.

“You know, after working together for five years, we’d all become pretty friendly. I’ve actually known Matt Martelli since I was in college [over 20 years ago]. Unfortunately, when I reached out to Josh Martelli about the site and the URL, he essentially told me to go fuck myself, which came as a huge shock to me!”

It’s all fun and games until someone registers a domain name, or something like that. A response from Matt Martelli has been published by Jalopnik and if you’re still reading this piece, we recommend you go check it out.

[Source: Jalopnik]