Fast Track to Fat Loss

Fast Track to Fat Loss Review:

Why are There Two Diets with the Same Name?

This is a case of dueling diets. Or rather a famous trainer’s diet’s name being appropriated off by a opportunistic internet entrepreneur.

The former Global Health & Fitness program operated by Fitness WorldWide of Portland, Oregon, rebranded itself in mid 2008 as Fast Track to Fat Loss, LLC, with a website at FastTrackToFatLoss.com. Certified Personal Trainer Chad Tackett operates Fast Track to Fat Loss, but he decided he needed a frontwoman with more star power, so he struck a deal with Kim Lyons of “The Biggest Loser” fame to act as frontwoman.

Diets with a celebrity connection do well, so Canadian Dean Ponak in mid 2010, two years after the original Fast Track to Fitness went online, registered the hyphenated version of the domain, fast-track-to-fat-loss.com, and between search engine optimization and creating an affiliate program (which incentivizes others to link to your site), Mr. Ponak managed to start to rank higher in search engine results than the original diet.

The Trademark Controversy

Can Mr. Ponak do this? Fast Track to Fat Loss (the Oregon company) filed for a United States trademark for “Fast Track to Fat Loss” in February 2010. However, trademarks are granted only in specific fields, and you need to apply for more than one field if you intend to do business in more than one field (and pay the extra fees). Fast Track to Fat Loss only obtained a trademark for health and nutrition related training services, such as courses and workshops. Generally a company will file for at least two fields to throw a protective boundary around their trademark. For instance, for a company contemplating any activity on the internet (and who isn’t?) there is a category for online tools, for instance.

So there was a “major fail” on the part of Fast Track to Fat Loss in protecting their trademark. Although there are ways to protect trademarks in fields in which you haven’t filed, such as a trademark dilution lawsuit, it makes it much harder and more expensive and less certain than simply owning the trademark outright in every field you operate in.

What Are the Details of Each Diet?

We are looking into the nature of each diet and will write up the details when we have more information. In general, it appears that the copy is a simple downloadable e-book, while the original is a set of DVDs and an online ocmmunity.