From the Niagara Falls Review:
Steve Alek’s registered trademark of the word Fallsview could be undone by a semicolon, says a Niagara Falls woman with 20 years of experience in trademark law.
“If all of these services (listed on his registration) have not been provided since the date claimed, I would question the validity of the registration,” said Pamela Feldman, who spent 20 years as a trademark agent with the Toronto office of global law firm McCarthy Tetrault before retiring in 2005 and moving to Niagara.
According to the trademark registration filed Sept. 20, Alek claimed to have used the word Fallsview for the following services:
“(1) Furnishing of travel information to Canada and Niagara Falls via the Internet and/or travel related website; hotel services; motel services; restaurant services; sightseeing services, mainly guided tour services” since Jan. 17, 1995.
Pamela Feldman said reading that, it appears as though Alek owns or operates at least one hotel, motel, restaurant and guided tour service.
“It’s the semicolon,” she said. “I take that list to read that he actually owns these types of businesses.”
But Alek doesn’t own a hotel, motel, restaurant or tour company.
From the Niagara Falls Review:
Steve Alek knows the words people use to describe him: Cybersquatter. Opportunist. There are others, but libel laws and good taste make it impossible to print them.
For the most part, he says, he couldn’t care less.
“You’ve got to have the mindset doing this, ‘How do (I) want to be perceived,’” Alek said this week from his home in Crystal Beach. “People can think I’m a (jerk), but at the end I’m not that much of a (jerk) really. It’s just business.”
From the Niagara Falls Review:
As we’ve been documenting for the past three days, there are significant challenges facing the tourism industry in Niagara Falls - namely, how to bring more visitors here and how to keep them here longer.
Tourism isn’t, and must not be, a dirty word around Niagara Falls. It’s a major industry in our city. While we lament the loss of manufacturing jobs and try to figure how we can compete with Mexico and China to get them back, the homegrown tourism industry offers a realistic chance for growth.
The city is doing construction work at the top of Clifton Hill at Victoria Avenue. The traffic lights have been taken out (I assume temporarily) and they’ve taken out the turning lane (I assume permanently) on Victoria Avenue that let you turn down Clifton Hill.
From the Niagara Falls Review:
It is often said by locals and visitors that dining in the tourist areas costs more than it does to eat in the same restaurants in other parts of the city or region.
Here’s what we found at several local eating spots:
From the Niagara Falls Review:
This is the second in a three-part series looking at the state of the city’s tourism industry.
Every year, more than 12 million people from around the world travel to Niagara Falls.
Well-heeled and blue-collar families from cities and towns in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio; daytrippers from Western New York and southern Ontario; travellers from Britain, Europe, South America and Asia; singles, couples - they all come here.
But the awesome sight of the rushing water can only hold the attention of visitors for so long before it is time to move on to something else.
It’s finding that ’something else’ to appeal to a broad range of visitors that is so often the problem, say tourism insiders.
From the Niagara Falls Review:
This is the first installment in a three-part series looking at the state of the city’s tourism industry
Tourism is a volatile business, tied to local and global economies and impacted by national and international events.
Like the exchange rate, for example: Something that has been touted as a big reason why Americans are choosing vacations on their own side of the border as their dollar declines in value on the world market.
The phenomenon is expected to get worse as the Canadian dollar hovers around par with the U.S. greenback.
As Niagara Falls struggles through several slow seasons, it might look a few thousand kilometres to the south for a lesson in how to survive in tough times.
As has been commented elsewhere, the Pilgrim Restaurant on Clifton Hill is now closed.
A Windows Live Spaces user going by IndyMcDuff has a blog entry about some photos he/she took/posted:
Falls Avenue on the Canadian side, as you can see, is chock full of monsterly attractions, something we were unaware of as we had never been there before.
As was mentioned in a previous comment, the Days Inn behind the Hilton on Stanley Avenue is being demolished.
Recent Comments