MLB Tries To Trademark 3 City Names, Runs Away After Law Profs School Them
from the boston-trademark-party dept
It’s opening day and already Major League Baseball has struck out.
It’s a story as old as time: major sports league tries to trademark a bunch of city names only to be schooled on the internet and media by law professors and dropping the applications. Well, okay, so that’s not that common of a story, but it sure is what just happened to Major League Baseball.
See, MLB decided to attempt to trademark three city names: Boston, Seattle, and Houston. Why those three cities? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The categories for the applications were baseball games (fine), athletic events (wait…), concerts (hold on now), fan clubs (no way), and sports camps (nuh uh). As you may sense from my parentheticals, there are a great many problems with those categories, namely that a metric ton of other businesses and organizations are already using the name of the city in which they operate in their names, branding, etc. Fan clubs? So a fan club for the band Boston calls itself what, exactly?
Then came the public, media, and law professors, all explaining just how very stupid this all was.
But crucially, the two applications, if granted, could have opened the door to the Red Sox having the ability to assert a legal claim to merchandise that simply bears the name “Boston,” but is not written in the classic style or font of the club, experts say.
“Which is a serious overreach,” Rebecca Curtin, a Suffolk University law professor, said on Friday.
The public backlash was fairly swift. None of this should be particularly surprising, given that MLB was trying to trademark the name of a major freaking city for categories that would impact all kinds of other businesses and people. In a matter of days, the league had dropped its applications and the owner of the Red Sox got to work bus-tossing MLB in the press to make sure the public didn’t blame his team for this idiocy.
The league isn’t talking, unsurprisingly, but the law profs still are.
Stacey Dogan, a law professor at Boston University, called the trademark applications at issue “ridiculous.”
“Teams and institutions and universities and cities — all sorts of entities are trying to commercialize the value of their organization in some way,” she said. “They’re always eager to grab as much as they can get and to make claims that might give them a little bit more territory, but this one is really absurd.”
As one of my favorite follows, Alexandra Roberts, pointed out in that article, it was very unlikely that these trademarks would have survived the scrutiny of the USPTO itself, never mind the large amount of opposition that the application would likely face anyway.
Making this all an exercise in self-harm on the part of MLB.
Filed Under: boston, city names, houston, seattle, trademark
Companies: mlb
Comments on “MLB Tries To Trademark 3 City Names, Runs Away After Law Profs School Them”
The MLB lawyers really should seek professional help.
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…unfortunately they’re all at the ball game!
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MLB Lawyers: We told them it was a dumb idea…
Us: So why did you let them?
MLB Lawyers: We’re paid to advise then, not make their legal decisions…
Re: The MLB lawyers really should seek professional help.
Actually, they should face public scrutiny and be threatened with “major league” sanctions to deter attempts to trademark and monopolize common and generic terms.
Techdirt should also publish the names of the law firms and/or attorneys like The Western Journal did:
“According to the Boston Herald, MLB has enlisted copyright law attorney Maryann E. Licciardi to file the application on behalf of Boston Red Sox Baseball Club Limited Partnership New England Sports Ventures, LLC.”
Licciardi’s law firm is Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman P.C.
I know this problem firsthand from over 25 years of fighting back against “trademark bully” Entrepreneur magazine’s efforts to trademark and monopolize the word “entrepreneur” for all goods and services. Currently their primary attorney at least for TTAB actions is Adam Herrera at Latham & Watkins LLP.
“it was very unlikely that these trademarks would have survived the scrutiny of the USPTO itself”
Has she met THE USPTO??
could have opened the door to the Red Sox having the ability to assert a legal claim to merchandise that simply bears the name “Boston,”
I thought you could only trademark names in a particular form, not names themselves.
And why not trademark that expression together with the team name?
Someone was having a serious attack of stupid when they recommended trying this!
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Trademark gets applied for the stupidest of reasons and bases. To whit, someone thinking that trademarking the word “the” was a good idea.
Someone didn’t need to have an attack of stupid, all they’d need to do is look at trademarks like the above and think, “Why shouldn’t I submit a trademark, get it approved, and bully anyone who has something that looks vaguely similar?”
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I mean, this makes sense – trademarking “Boston” in the particular font the Red Sox like to use, sure. Similarly, trademarking the particular “Old English” font D that the Detroit Tigers have used, makes sense.
But besides all the other stuff, you’d also have to think that the various other sports leagues would have to oppose it (even if they secretly wished they could do it themselves) just to prevent issues for their own franchises in those locations…
We talking sports here?
Could not help but noticing you used a certain word, “the,” in a sports related article. Is that allowed?
Just last week I was booking a flight to Boston and I ended up at a friggin baseball game!!!
What the hell man!
O hope Boston (the band) counter attacks MLB for trying to steal their trademark
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It’s More Than A Feeling
Feels like this is a common theme for MLB under the reign of Rob Manfred as Commissioner. Even for all the harms he caused/allowed, I never doubted that Bed Selig at least actually liked baseball…
What about when a city has more than one sports team? Would the Rockets, the Seahawks, and the Celtics not be able to say where they are from?
Ok, if you mention Boston I have to mention one my all time favorite songs, from Treepeople’s, back when Doug Martsch was still its lead singer but then his other band Built To Spill took off, cover of Boston’s More Than A Feeling. Whenever I hear the Boston version I immediately hear the Treepeople version in my head playing. I have been an indie FM radio DJ for over three decades at KUOI then at KRFP so I literally have thousands and thousands of songs in my database and this is one my all time faves. Apologies for going off topic but this sone is one of the best ever, which isn’t too shocking since the original is also a classic.
Anyone who wishes to lay claim to Houston has clearly never been there.
This article is great.