Bear claw latches.......be careful how you word things

So many people in this hobby/industry use the phrase bear claw latch to refer to a rotary claw style door latching system for their truck or car. One company/group in our industry has placed a trademark on the term bear claw latch. This is a term that has been used for many years to describe these latches, but now it "belongs" to one group. This was brought to our attention by this group by phone one day. We received a phone call one day demanding the we stop using the phrase in our advertising and website due to the fact that it is trademarked. The caller went on to state that if we would be willing to use their latches in our kit, that we would be able to continue using the bear claw latch phrase with no recourse. Here is the problem we have with that:


When we first started manufacturing The Altman Easy Latch, a vehicle specific bolt-on rotary claw latch kit we were using this groups latches. We would take their bear claw latch and add levers and necessary components to make it work with exterior door handles, exterior door lock cylinders and interior door handles. Our first kit was for the 1953-56 Ford F-100. Things went well for a while and we purchased many bear claw latches form this group. One day we began receiving phone calls from customers that had their doors popping open unexpectedly. This is the very problem we were looking to solve with our Altman Easy Latch kits. After some investigating we found the cause of the issue. It seems this group began making changes to their bear claw latches. The main change was a reduction in paw thickness. The paws on their bear claw latches were 3/16" thick and they decided to reduce them to 1/8" thick. It was ONLY these latches that were failing. After making several calls to the company and getting nowhere we decided that we needed to take the quality control of our products into our own hands. We began researching latching systems and assessing the needs of our own kit and began manufacturing our own latching systems. We have always known these latches to be called bear claw latches, not this companies latches, but all latches of this type.

So, fast forward to today, we have several more kits, with great results. Now they are calling and e-mailing and saying to stop using the phrase bear claw latch. Here is an interesting thing for you to try though, pull up your favorite search engine and type in a search for bear claw latches. You will find numerous companies using this term and not selling this groups latches. I made it a point to call some of these companies and ask them if they had received the same warnings from this company. None of them had. Why has this company singled us out?

The end result is this, we have stopped using the phrase bear claw latch. We will refer to our latches as rotary claw latches. The Altman Easy Latch Kits are a very unique American made product. At the end of the day, the last thing we would want is to be associated with a group that has the type of business practices demonstrated by this company.