UFC Opposes Trademark App For Pillow Fighting Championship League Over Logo
from the pillow-talk dept
The Ultimate Fighting Championship people are certainly no strangers to readers here at Techdirt. The league that puts on both mixed martial arts events and, incredibly, events where participants take turns slapping the shit out of each other has been one of the most aggressive pushers of greater and greater IP enforcement programs in professional sports. From the desire for instant takedown enforcement foisted on ISPs to pushing for reforming the DMCA to “notice and stay down” practices, the UFC makes no apologies for wanting as much control and enforcement of its IP as possible.
So it probably shouldn’t be a huge surprise that the company also is quite draconian on matters of trademark enforcement as well. Still, the UFC’s opposition to another event league’s trademark application strikes me as a bit silly, given that the application was for the Pillow Fight Championship organization.
Soon after their professional pillow fights went viral, the world’s biggest MMA promotion sent out their lawyers to complain about Pillow FC’s logo and trademark application.
As the on-going case with the Patent and Trademark Office shows, the Ultimate Fighting Championship has formally objected to Pillow FC’s trademark application, citing that it could cause “confusion” to have that kind of branding.
The NY Post was first to report on the news, with Pillow Fight Championship CEO Steve Williams telling the outlet that the UFC was being “ridiculous” with their claims.
Okay, so let’s stipulate a couple of things here. First, the opposition from the UFC almost certainly comes from the fact that the branding for PFC, specifically the acronym, is styled and color schemed in a way that looks like the UFC’s branding. It’s also the case that the acronym is literally one letter off from UFC’s. If that’s as far as you dug into this, the opposition doesn’t seem all that crazy.
But here’s the branding side by side.
It’s suddenly a lot less cut and dry. The fonts are similar, but different. There’s no angle on the lettering in the PFC’s logo. Finally, the PFC branding typically has the full name of the league in big, bold letters. Unless UFC wants to argue that the public might be confused into thinking the company got into pillow fighting, there’s enough distinction that confusion over the logos themselves is probably not a reasonable fear.
But rather than fight this, PFC changed its logo… slightly.
Will that be enough to satsify the UFC? I somehow doubt it, but I certainly think it should. That logo in sum total certainly doesn’t call to mind the UFC to me. Whether the notoriously aggressive UFC agrees remains to be seen.
Filed Under: fighting, likelihood of confusion, pillow fights, trademark
Companies: ufc
Comments on “UFC Opposes Trademark App For Pillow Fighting Championship League Over Logo”
I’m sure the my pillow guy will be threatening a lawsuit next because, something, something, something
Re:
I’d bet the pillow guy would lose a pillow fight.
Mike Lindell
Since it’s been brought up, we can pretty much accept as a given that from now on nobdoy can use the words “The Ultimate Pillow Guy Stupid Comment” due to the words “The”, “Ultimate”, “Pillow”, and “Stupid Comment”, all of which are par for the course for the UFC, Pillow being a commonly confused word for “Fighting” of course.
I can see sorority party movies avoiding pillow fights going forward. Whatever they come up with (Ultimate Tickle Fight, maybe?) will just be begging for UFC to expand the “alleged synonyms for Fighting.”
William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2.
'Have you seen our fights? Damn near identical'
UFC: Our fights are so bloody boring that people whacking each other with pillows would be indistinguishable to our watchers.
The biggest punchline to trademark challenges like this has got to be how unbelievably stupid the company issuing the challenge has to portray their customers as in order to make their argument.
The UFC is just jealous
The UFC is just jealous that they did not come up with the global Pillow Fight Championship organization idea themselves. Sore losers. /s
Pillow fights are serious business.
Dana White is a piss baby cunt.
Dilution
Trademark lawyer with no skin in the game here: One of the counts in the Opposition is for “dilution” which doesn’t require a showing that there’s a likelihood of confusion. It requires only that the use “dilutes” the value of a famous brand.
Looking at the logos it’s pretty clear the designer was trying to play on the value of the UFC brand and took some baby steps toward legitimacy but didn’t go far enough.
It also says a lot that the UFC isn’t opposing the other applications for PFC.
IMHO, the UFC is legit in this protection of its rights and the PFC should respect that.
Re:
Colonel Sanders will be right the hell over.
I always say on anything that involves UFC legal issues or a certain CEO in question, “Daily reminder that Dana White is a cunt.”
How do they get the boxing gloves on the pillows?
Facts
PFC: entertainment
UFC, Untalented failed combat.
There was a time UFC offered something something different,
For an American audience. The likes of Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn etc.
low payouts, poor performance, and just bad ideas over all.
Half then”signed” talent has bashed everything about the company and most former stars want as little to do with it as possible.
When it started international TV wasn’t really a thing.
Today, the likes of Pride, KBI, And Zero, beamed into homes world wide, show just what a joke it is. A knock off, rip off, joke.
All they can do is file in court. They are giving away tickets to make the crowd larger than what pays, people show up half way into the show wanting to watch one match, and nobody wants to pay the excessive streaming price.
Re:
I’m amazed they’re still around at all.