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For what it's worth.....I'm not an attorney but I've had considerable experience with trademarks and in the end it doesn't really matter who has or owns the registration filed at the patent & trademark office. The bottom line is who can show prior and continuos use of the trademark in commerce...period. Trademarks are protected by the owner using them not by a registration number. However, the other side of the coin is if the original owner of a trademark knew it was being used by others and did not try to prevent it's use that may be considered having abandoned the trademark. I would think in this case being a family name as well as a business name it would be somewhat easy to show continuos use. I would hope so anyway.

I know in my case my family had a product we manufactured for over 20 years under a trade name. We never had the name trademarked but when our biggest competitor found out that the name was considered abandon by the P&TO he ran out and filed a trademark on it and sent me a letter demanding that I stop using the name as it now belong to him. At that point. he started using it. Sorry it does not work that way. Obviously we could show prior and continuos use of the trademark so his registration was reversed ours was filed and he had to pay me 20K to boot for violating MY trademark. It was protected by my family using it not by a registration number.