The Atlanta BeltLine tour bus. Photo by Dena Mellick

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has taken note of a dispute between the owner of a private Facebook group and the group managing the publicly-owned Atlanta BeltLine.

The Talk of the Town blog recapped ABI’s efforts to force Jessie Fream to change the name of her “Humans of the Atlanta BeltLine” Facebook group. ABI has received an avalanche of criticism over contacting Fream to urge her to change the name. Fream runs the Facebook group in her spare time, for fun, and posts pictures of people she meets along the Beltline.

This is not the first time ABI has told people to stop using using the word “Beltline,” citing their trademark of the word. They sued a realty group over use of the word and have sent out cease-and-desist letters to others, including Atlanta Loop’s owner, Decaturish.

“Beltline is not some genius idea of a name,” Atlanta Loop Editor and Publisher Dan Whisenhunt told the AJC. “ABI needs to rethink its whole strategy with regard to non-commercial uses of its name and rethink its strategy of how far do we want to take this.”

To read the full AJC story, click here.