OT: Which threads blow you away? The great jersey debate

[Navin R Slavin]

To springboard: it falls on the trademark holder to themselves take care that their TM protection remains effective. Once you have determined what is the Thing in your trademarked logo, you have to protect it zealously to ridiculous ends.

Yup. This. Every IP lawyer knows that you *overprotect* a mark, knowing full well that you may lose some of those cases -- but that's far better than *demonstrably underprotecting* a mark, which is a sure way to lose legal protection of that mark entirely.

 

[MinJaBen]

As a side note, and maybe @MinJaBen knows more about it, I distinctly remember a legal battle maybe 10 years ago between Duke University and John Wayne's estate about using the name "Duke" in selling alcoholic beverages. No idea how it ended up.

EDIT: A quick google search doesn't show much from 2014 other than the Wayne Family was unsuccessful in their first court decision, but that's all I see.

la-me-ln-john-wayne-duke-trademark-20141002-story.html

I don't know anything about that. Sounds interesting, though.

 

[Negan4Coach]

So does anybody want to speculate that when they put ads on the jerseys if the ones they sell at The Eye will have them as well? Is anybody actually going to purchase one if they do?

 

[tarheelhockey]

That (in bold) is the key though. Same letters in a similar arrangement.

University of Michigan does have a Trademark for the Block Yellow M. If someone else were to do a "block" M, even if not the same color, I bet they'd sue (or require permission) and on good grounds. McDonalds has a trademark on the arches M. It's yellow, but not similar to the Michigan M at all other than the color. If someone tried to use a similar arches M logo, even if not exact or a different color, I guarantee you they'd sue.

It's the "interlocking" CH which is a likely an infringement on the Canadiens trademark that they were upset about. I don't see that as ridiculous as I'd expect it.

Like I said, Georgia and Grambling needed approval from the Green Bay Packers to use their logos. If international boat manufacturing had an IBM logo with a few bars through the logo but it was a different font and red instead of blue, IBM, the computer company would sue.

The interlocking CH is trademarked and part of the Habs brand. If someone tries to emulate it, but modifies it to their own colors, etc... they need to get approval or legal action will be taken.

Trust me, these teams/companies view their brands and logos very seriously and do whatever it takes to protect them.

To springboard: it falls on the trademark holder to themselves take care that their TM protection remains effective. Once you have determined what is the Thing in your trademarked logo, you have to protect it yealously to ridiculous ends.

It's not necessary to take everything to court, but you do have to underline it by your actions and give the optics that you view any potential infringement as a courtable offense, so that one day if need be you can argue and show in the court of law that in no way you have let your trademark lapse due to allowing others by inactivity to assume certain kind of logos and make them think it's okay with you.

If MTL let any professional sports team get away with a CH element in their logo and establish their usage of it, and then that team some years later goes and repurposes the logo to really be CH, MTL will have hard time arguing back when the team says that "CH" has been promimently a part of our logo for years now and we had a number of fan merch with prominent CH and quite frankly we don't get what issue the Canadiens Hontreal even have here.

Any suspected silly over-doing of today by the MTL legal team is only done in preparation to such a potential future trademark trial. Cease and Desist letters are cheap enoug to send and effective against any feigned ignorance that a trademark troll* might throw at you in some future day.


* Do note, not all the people infringing your trademark are actually planning to make themselves a business out of selling cheap poor quality Chinese college pants with HARTFORD WHALE wordmark on them. Some of them just want you to pay them money to go away with their silly trademark registration attempt.

MTL don't want a trademark troll claiming that they felt that "CH" branding in sports gear was a free for all, seeing that MTL did nothing when Hornets for example opted for a CH branding, and this court must now find this case against Montreal Canadiens who just try to unlawfully block my client Calvin&Hobbes Sportsgear from entering the sporting equipment markets with their completely unfounded claims of an infringement of intellectual property by my client.

I get all this, I really do. My job has me working closely (daily) with the Brand Management office at NC State, which deals with actual infringement cases all the time. Some of the stuff that crosses their desk is crazy enough to be actually funny.

I get that corporations have a team of lawyers whose job description includes being the junkyard dog toward any entity that can be accused in the most vague terms of remotely approaching their IP, and that there are sound legal reasons for behaving that way. But it's just... ridiculous. We end up with situations like this, where nobody could possibly confuse the two entities -- not even a mentally deficient toddler could look at a teal/white logo with a picture of a hornet holding a basketball and think perhaps it is the red/white/blue logo of the Montreal Canadiens Hockey Club -- and yet the Hornets get bullied out of using their own actual IP by a frivolous cease & desist. And the bullying works, not because it's a valid claim, because it's prohibitively expensive to fight the fight.

I'm just saying that this specific case is an absurdity. The initials "CH" are not, in any concrete reality, an invention of or intellectual property of the Montreal Canadiens. People have been interlocking Cs and Hs since those letters came into existence. Interlocking those initials is not actually anyone's IP, any more than a red/white/blue color scheme is anyone's IP. Those are simply design features of a logo which is IP in its combined totality. Using those design features in isolation from one another is not a violation of anything. The Habs undoubtedly realize this, realize they don't have a valid claim against anyone use of an interlocking "CH" in a completely different shape, font, and color.

I'm all for IP protections which accomplish the goal of protecting the fruit of someone's actual intellectual labor, so people don't get ripped off. This isn't close to that. This is a case of our trademark system encouraging frivolous legal maneuvers which are completely nonsensical in principle. Instead of encouraging a creative intellectual marketplace, it sends us in the other direction.

 

[Lempo]

initials "CH" are not, in any concrete reality, an invention of or intellectual property of the Montreal Canadiens. People have been interlocking Cs and Hs since those letters came into existence. Interlocking those initials is not actually anyone's IP, any more than a red/white/blue color scheme is anyone's IP. Those are simply design features of a logo which is IP in its combined totality. Using those design features in isolation from one another is not a violation of anything. The Habs undoubtedly realize this, realize they don't have a valid claim against anyone use of an interlocking "CH" in a completely different shape, font, and color.

One thing is, trademarks gets registered for certain type of products or product families. They may have been interlocking C and H for logos since the Roman Republic and way before the Canadiens, but Canadiens are who has it registered for sports entertainment purposes. Maybe MTL wouldn't pester Charlotte Honeymakers the food substance company, but Charlotte Hornets the professional sports team with interlocked CH logo is a different matter.

As for the combined totality argument, if Charlotte started using and establishing this logo, what's stopping Charlotte first dropping the word Charlotte out of it, and then after that making the hornet look different, and then using the only original element of the logo, the interlocked C and H with the upper wing of C having that very Habs-like omega thingy at the end, on their merch and whatnot? And then making their jerseys red.

It's a slippery slope argument, yes, but a very possible scenario how things might evolve, either by accident or by some dick buying the intellectual property and intentionally doing that. Sadly, this is exactly the point of time when Habs have to stamp down on it and nip it at the bud, just to be on the safe side.

If Habs let Hornets establish their usage of the elements and features, they have hard time trying to pull it back if and when Hornets logo owner starts tweaking their logo by different usage of any of these established-for-Hornets design elements.

It's a very established logo that the Habs got. If someone got a similar logo established, there would be a line of trademark trolls offering to buy the rights from the Hornets so they can start siphoning on the Habs trademark, by one way or another.

 

[tarheelhockey]

One thing is, trademarks gets registered for certain type of products or product families. They may have been interlocking C and H for logos since the Roman Republic and way before the Canadiens, but Canadiens are who has it registered for sports entertainment purposes. Maybe MTL wouldn't pester Charlotte Honeymakers the food substance company, but Charlotte Hornets the professional sports team with interlocked CH logo is a different matter.

Again -- I get it, but it's an absurdity of the trademark system. Nobody is going to confuse the Charlotte Hornets basketball team with the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, based on two logos that look nothing alike. The single commonality that they share (the non-specific principle of interlocking of two letters) is not something which can actually be trademarked.

It's a frivolous case, made for performative reasons. I get it, I get why it happens. But it's a very stupidly designed system which results in this sort of thing, and which has enough teeth to have material outcomes in favor of the frivolous/performative party.

As for the combined totality argument, if Charlotte started using and establishing this logo, what's stopping Charlotte first dropping the word Charlotte out of it, and then after that making the hornet look different, and then using the only original element of the logo, the interlocked C and H with the upper wing of C having that very Habs-like omega thingy at the end, on their merch and whatnot? And then making their jerseys red.

What's stopping the Carolina Hurricanes from warping their oval into a C-shape, and then turning the Eye into an H shape, and then changing their colors to red/white/blue? What's stopping them from adding the non-trademarked slogan "Montreal Hockey" at the bottom?

^^^ this is not a valid argument for why the current Canes logo infringes on Habs IP. Speculation about future infringement with a completely different design does not constitute actual infringement in the present.

If Habs let Hornets establish their usage of the elements and features, they have hard time trying to pull it back if and when Hornets logo owner starts tweaking their logo by different usage of any of these established-for-Hornets design elements.

No, they wouldn't have had a hard time at all. If the Hornets logo actually started infringing on Habs IP (which this logo did not) then they could have gone to court and made their case and won a judgment. This particular action wasn't about the difficulty of walking back an infringement case, it was about making a frivolous claim to IP rights that they didn't actually hold.

It's a very established logo that the Habs got. If someone got a similar logo established, there would be a line of trademark trolls offering to buy the rights from the Hornets so they can start siphoning on the Habs trademark, by one way or another.

Of course, but the Hornets logo wasn't anything close to similar to the Habs logo. The only design element they had in common was the non-specific concept of interlocking a C and H, which is not Habs IP. The cease&desist is just a boundary marker, not an actual valid case. The Hornets were well within their legal rights to use that logo, they just declined to fight the fight.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Don’t fall for it @Lempo , @tarheelhockey heard about the new Bojangles and is just arguing this to goad you into meeting him in the parking lot for a fight .

 

[MinJaBen]

Don’t fall for it @Lempo , @tarheelhockey heard about the new Bojangles and is just arguing this to goad you into meeting him in the parking lot for a fight .

That's disgusting.

 

[Lempo]

What's stopping the Carolina Hurricanes from warping their oval into a C-shape, and then turning the Eye into an H shape, and then changing their colors to red/white/blue? What's stopping them from adding the non-trademarked slogan "Montreal Hockey" at the bottom?

No one having been stupid enough to give Dundon this idea!

 

[LakeLivin]

That's a remarkably bland logo. Montreal actually did the Hornets a favor, lol.

 

[tarheelhockey]

That's a remarkably bland logo. Montreal actually did the Hornets a favor, lol.

It really is a terrible logo. Imagine the brand perception of the Hornets if they had... that instead of Hugo and the Starter jackets etc. That logo change is the only thing saving them from being a Coyotes-like brand. All's well that ends well, I guess.

Funny enough, that original logo was designed by Alexander Julian who presumably knew what he was doing.

 

[Svechhammer]

So does anybody want to speculate that when they put ads on the jerseys if the ones they sell at The Eye will have them as well? Is anybody actually going to purchase one if they do?

It's been reported that the jersey ads will not be on the ones they sell to fans.

But it's probably only a matter of time before they do

 

[Negan4Coach]

It's been reported that the jersey ads will not be on the ones they sell to fans.

But it's probably only a matter of time before they do

Would probably be pretty great to use HF Boards as a platform to organize a boycott of jersey buying when that day comes.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Would probably be pretty great to use HF Boards as a platform to organize a boycott of jersey buying when that day comes.

I’ve been boycotting jersey buying for probably 20 years, so I’m in.

 

[Lempo]

Would probably be pretty great to use HF Boards as a platform to organize a boycott of jersey buying when that day comes.

So... we gonna like each others' post until we all make the list again and then change our avatars to say "NO BUY JERSEYS W/ ADS!"?

 

[MinJaBen]

So... we gonna like each others' post until we all make the list again and then change our avatars to say "NO BUY JERSEYS W/ ADS!"?

Naw, we just change all of our Avatars to brands so we make the most liked page look like a NASCAR race car.

 

[Svechhammer]

So... we gonna like each others' post until we all make the list again and then change our avatars to say "NO BUY JERSEYS W/ ADS!"?

Naw, we just change all of our Avatars to brands so we make the most liked page look like a NASCAR race car.

So we go with the Zak Brown approach?

 

[Lempo]

---

Re: the trademark stuff in general, my wife went yesterday to score some fridge boxes, and this is certainly something that Marie Kondo's lawyers should drop on like ton of bricks.

And maybe they already have, because in their online marketing Rotho seems to use "Cook with Joy", "Storage with Joy" etc. distancing the word "organize" from "joy".

But on the store shelves, a packet of boxes with this label on top of it, anyone who ever heard of KonMari will make the (false) connection to that brand.

 

[Lempo]

Meanwhile, Mariah Carey has chosen to back up @tarheelhockey 's claim of "our trademark system encouraging frivolous legal maneuvers which are completely nonsensical in principle":

Mariah Carey 'Queen of Christmas' trademark attempt prompts backlash

The singer's attempt to trademark the title causes a dispute with other Christmas-associated stars.

www.bbc.com

QUEEN OF CHRISTMAS - Lotion, LLC Trademark Registration

Trademark registration by Lotion, LLC for the trademark QUEEN OF CHRISTMAS.

uspto.report

 

[Svechhammer]

Now this is interesting. Going back to this tweet from a couple weeks ago:

So......

I just did a quick look at fanatics and noticed something...

The Black jerseys that were uploaded for Burns this year are uploaded as our Home jersey:

For comparison sake, last year's listings are still showing as the Alternate Jersey:

Even more interesting, the URLs of those also switched from Alternate to Home as well.

 

[cptjeff]

Yeah, not shocked. With them wearing them in the playoffs every year, I'm shocked it didn't happen sooner.

 

[AD Skinner]

Not surprised but a little sad. I still think the red with the swirl logo is a better look all around, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Still hope they do something about the road whites but I guess if that was going to happen this upcoming season we'd have heard about it by now

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Naw, we just change all of our Avatars to brands so we make the most liked page look like a NASCAR race car.

I've already done that so I'm way ahead of everyone.

 

[Svechhammer]

I.... Might have blown up Canes Twitter with this attention to detail

 

[CandyCanes]

I'm sad. I'll miss the red as our main home jersey. I'm guessing our reverse retros will be red tho.