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A few months ago, Impossible Foods – a multibillion dollar processed food company – filed a lawsuit against my company – IMPOSSIBLE®. They are seeking to cancel our trademarks, bully us into submission, and make us pay for the entire legal proceeding.

Up until now, I’ve remained quiet – as we’ve engaged in each step of the legal process. However, I’d like to share a bit behind the scenes of what fighting a David vs. Goliath lawsuit is actually like for small business entrepreneurs.

For context, I began IMPOSSIBLE ® in 2010. We have a suite of impossible trademarks (18!) that we’ve diligently registered over the years (you can find them all here). Impossible Foods – according to their own filing statements, didn’t begin until 2015.

In their lawsuit, they’re not just suing IMPOSSIBLE ® – but actually seeking to cancel our federally registered marks which pre-date theirs, requesting that their marks take priority over ours, and are requesting that we pay their legal fees for enduring this process.

Their claims have no basis in reality, are a blatant intellectual property land grab, and unfortunately are a classic case of law fare by a large multi-national company set on bullying smaller ones to hand over their legally registered intellectual property. They want to avoid the inconvenient facts of reality, by wasting everyone’s time and money in court.

I’ve been building IMPOSSIBLE for 11 years. We’ve built fitness programming, nutrition products, apparel and a whole lot more, but a huge part of it has always been sharing my story – from unemployment to starting my own business to running an ultra marathon on every continent in the world for charity. The message has been clear and consistent – you can change your life by pushing your limits and doing hard things – even when they seem impossible. 

This will be no different.

I’ll be sharing updates as I can from here on out, as no entrepreneurs or small businesses should have to deal with multi-billion dollar companies attempting to stampede on their legally registered trademark rights simply because they think bullying a smaller business is the best way to get what they want.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done” – Nelson Mandela

Stay tuned,

Joel Runyon

IMPOSSIBLE ®

Established 2010

p.s. Thank you for reading over the years. If you’d like to support, you can share this with 3 friends.

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You can also get an impossible shirt or support our non-profit work here.

Keep pushing your limits and do something impossible.

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Update: Thank you for the support! This twitter thread in particular has been blowing up (30k views and counting).