There is a George Washington High School in Denver. There are also schools named after Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
But if you are looking for a school in the metro area that will honor John Adams, the nation’s second president, you are out of luck — that is, if a California charter school gets its way.
John Adams Academy in Roseville, Calif., sent a letter to the leadership at John Adams High School, a planned charter school in Douglas County, warning the Colorado school to change its name or risk facing legal action for infringing on the academy’s federal trademark registration.
LETTER: Read the JAA trademark infringement letter to JAHS
The letter, dated May 20, states that by using the founding father’s name, John Adams High School risked “confusing students and parents interested in either schools and damaging JAA’s ‘John Adams Academy’ trademark.”
The letter, which was sent by an attorney representing the 5-year-old Sacramento-area academy, said the Colorado school needed to adopt a name “that does not include John Adams.”
Matthew Krol, president of the board of directors for John Adams High School, expressed disbelief when he received the cease-and-desist order. He said he found numerous other John Adams high schools online, including in New York City, Cleveland and Indiana.
“They shouldn’t have ownership of the names of presidents of the United States,” Krol said. “It does seem unfathomable to me.”
He said he and other members of the school’s board have “no plans to relinquish the name.”
Krol, who works at Altitude Sports & Entertainment, has spent the past couple of years trying to establish John Adams High School as a Douglas County charter school. The founders of the school wanted to honor another founding father with the new school.
The school has a website, where nearly 2,000 families have signed an “intent to enroll” form, and it boasts a Facebook page with nearly 800 likes.
On June 2, the Douglas County School Board granted the school its charter. Krol said he is still trying to find a location for the school and hopes to have it up and running in just over a year.
“It’s not like we just showed up yesterday,” Krol said. “We’ve been promoting John Adams High School for several years, and it has all come to fruition with the approval we got (from the district).”
But Mark Leonard, an attorney representing John Adams Academy, said the reason his client contacted John Adams High School was because the academy began receiving calls from parents inquiring about the future school in Colorado. It became clear that the similar names were causing confusion, Leonard said.
He said the standard in trademark law is not whether a name is identical — the California school specifically registered “John Adams Academy” in 2014 — but whether it poses a “confusing similarity.”
“Then you look to the goods and services (of the two entities) and see if they are highly related,” he said.
John Adams Academy’s trademark registrations won’t affect existing schools that use the second president’s name because they are granted the moniker under the legal standard of “common-law rights,” Leonard said. But future schools that try to use the name, he said, or existing ones that plan to open new campuses could face a legal challenge.
“Federal trademark registration freezes the common-law users to their respective markets,” he said.
Viva Moffat, a law professor at the University of Denver who specializes in intellectual property, said John Adams Academy’s case against John Adams High School is “very, very weak.”
She said the fact that the schools are 1,000 miles apart and that the word “academy” appears nowhere in the Douglas County school’s name challenge the claim of confusion.
“The potential consumers for the two different producers — those being the schools — are two different sets of people,” Moffat said.
Legal questions aside, Dennis Fiori, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, said registering a trademark on a president’s name so that no other school can use it is “unfortunate.” John Adams lived in Quincy, Mass., and the National Park Service maintains the Adams National Historical Park in the city.
“I think we should take great pride in our presidents and make every effort to connect to our history through them,” he said.
In the meantime, Krol hopes he can come to an agreement with John Adams Academy on the use of the second president’s name, short of ending up in court.
“We’re busy enough trying to get a school off the ground, establish a curriculum and find a location,” he said. “We don’t want to deal with a silly trademark issue.”
John Aguilar: 303-954-1695, jaguilar@denverpost.com or twitter.com/abuvthefold