LOCKTOBER – An Apology to Our Community

Over the last few hours, we have seen and read many of your messages, comments and reactions regarding LOCKTOBER and our trademark.

We have listened carefully, and first of all, we want to say:

We are deeply and sincerely sorry.

We should not have trademarked LOCKTOBER, and we should not have used that trademark to contact other businesses using the term.

We are truly sorry to everyone we contacted and to anyone in the community who felt worried, upset, angry or disappointed by our actions. It was never our intention to threaten or intimidate anyone, but we completely understand how our messages could have been interpreted that way.

We got this wrong, and we are very sorry.

Our intention was to create collaborations around LOCKTOBER and work together with other businesses and members of the community. But we now recognise that we chose the wrong way to do this. We could and should have done it without trademarking a term that means so much to the community.

We want to correct our mistake.

Today, we contacted our lawyer and the European Union Intellectual Property Office to request the cancellation of the LOCKTOBER trademark.

And we want to make one thing absolutely clear:

LOCKTOBER is free for everyone to use – privately and commercially. No permission from us is required.

We hope you can accept our sincere apology. We cannot undo what has happened, but we can listen, learn from it and take responsibility for correcting our mistake.

LOCKTOBER belongs with the community, and that is where we want it to stay.

We are truly, deeply sorry.