June 25, 2025 | Mark Luis Foster

In the “you just can’t believe this” department comes a story from Pinellas County in Florida where an HOA board is fighting off a resident who attempted to trademark the name of their HOA (Stonebriar), while at the same time plopping down a storage shed that was clearly in violation of HOA rules.

This two-fer has created a lot of legal wrangling and an expensive attorney’s bill that got assessed to HOA residents.

The cases involve Stonebriar HOA homeowner John Siamas, who ran for Florida State Senate in 2024, but was defeated in the primary. It first started with the pop-up storage shed:

“He put up a shed. And the covenants indicated no sheds. And the board nicely asked him to remove it. He said no. One thing after another, now we’ve got a lawsuit on our hands,” said neighbor John Papa.

Mr Siamas apparently asked permission from the property manager to erect the shed, which is considered an outbuilding and in violation of covenants. He never heard back so he went forward with it.

Then, fast forward a few years. This same gentleman filed a trademark to protect the name of the HOA, presumably in his own name.

According to a notice to homeowners, the money will pay a trademark attorney $425 an hour to oppose an application John Siamas filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the term “Stonebriar Improvement Association, Inc.”

The result is more than $80,000 in legal fees that get parsed out to all residents. And that created a lot of raised eyebrows.

You can watch the story here.