Steve Perry Drops Legal Action Over Journey Trademarks

Keavin Wiggins | January 08, 2023

Video still

Journey guitarist Neal Schon shared via social media that former frontman Steve Perry has withdrawn his petition against the band's trademarks over some of the group's biggest hits.

Schon, the group's founding guitarist, took to Twitter on Saturday and shared an image of the cancelation request filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, dated January 6th, 2023.

Neal captioned the photo, "So much for [Jonathan Cain] trying to throw me under the bus as he claimed I was blatantly trying to rip off [Steve Perry] while collecting the checks for the very diligent work my wife and I did to protect our Merch. Time for coffee."

Perry launched the legal action in September of last year asking the agency to invalidate 20 trademark registrations held by a company called Freedom JN LLC, a company that he said was controlled by his former bandmates Schon, claiming that they were not authorized to unilaterally register trademarks for the song names under a partnership agreement between the trio that he said required unanimous consent for any use of the tracks, for merchandise or anything else, according to Billboard, via hennemusic.

Schon reacted to the legal move via social media in September. He shared a link to an article and wrote, Schon shared a link to a report about Perry's action and wrote, "Steve Perry Sues... Here's how it goes friends. Jonathan Cain calls a board of directors meeting out of nowhere - then before I found out about the meeting Jonathan came to me and said he didn't like what they ( Ross Smith Perry and Herbie ) were planning.

"On that meeting Steve Perry -Ross - Smith and Herbie voted myself and Cain off the board of directors , Steve and all - voted Ross in my place and Smith in Jonathan's.

"They all knew at this time I'd been investigating our Trade marks for years trying to get to the bottom of all corruption as we found ( my wife and I ) that nothing had ever been Trade Marked besides our music. They all went for a take over and it didn't work. Quite simple.

"So my wife (Michaele Schon) found a legitimate Trade Mark attorney that wasn't in the corrupt musical circles and we were then Successful in attaining it to Protect everything we built.

"We had been getting ripped off since the beginning until I shut it down.
So the question is - Why did no one else's attorneys "Steve Perry's" who was actually who was actually hired to be our Band attorney by our accountant Tim Jorstad at one time also and individual band attorneys and other so called trade mark attorneys help us do this?

"It was a giant corrupted ring of people that either Managnent or accountants hired to work for us cashing in on all our merchandise till now , all along knowing there was No Trade Mark on our merch.

"At this point I decided to protect and go for All album titles as well as song titles as no one else had in 49 years of so called professional business.
"The more we got educated on how Song Writing and Copy rights have NOTHING to do with Trade Marks. You haven't heard the last of this friends. We are going to peel back the onion.

"Neal Schon Journey Lead Guitarist - Founder - Manager".

A month later, a dispute arose between Schon and Cain.