They're Going to Get Rid of the Nats, One Way or Another
Last week Ball-Wonk picked up the news that a Cincinnati company called Bygone Sports might win a case with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granting them the rights to the name Washington Nationals. Today, ESPN and The New York Times are reporting that the dispute will go to a judge in April, and a loss in the case there might necessitate a name change for the beleaguered Washington franchise. Ball-Wonk, whose post covers the implications pretty thoroughly, suggests we keep our name and shorten the moniker on the jersey to just "Nats," which most of us call them anyway. I like the Nats idea, but think we should change the long name to the Washington Natropolitan Baseball Club.
One of our diligent writers did some background research on the Bygone trademarks at the USPTO website. Regarding the Nats issue, he says:
If you look at the trademarks, they have to claim what commerce the mark is to be used on. For the Nationals, it only appears to be clothing: t-shirts, caps, jackets, pants, shorts; sweatshirts, sweatpants, jerseys. So those are the only grounds on which they can pursue infringment - clothing. There are other uses which are not claimed (print use of the logo, for example).
The writer also saw that Bygone has trademarked the name "New York Knights," the team on which Robert Redford plays in "The Natural." Regarding this, our researcher notes:
For the New York Knights, they are claiming, "amusement products, games, gaming products and equipment; namely games of chance, games of pseudo-chance, and games of skill; amusement apparatus, gaming machines, and equipment; namely slot machines, video gaming machines, video poker machines, video gaming machines of chance, video gaming machines of pseudo-chance, and video gaming machines of skill." Basically, if they were to get this, and a video game were to come out with "New York Knights" as a fantasy-type team, probably referring back to the movie the Natural, they could sue the maker for use of the term. Like, if EA Sports has a code in one of their baseball games to "unlock" this hidden team and you suddenly have Roy Hobbs in video game form, Bygone Sports would sue for trademark infringement.
To sum up, lawyers will make hundreds of thousands of dollars arguing over who owns the rights to the name of a fictional baseball team used in a video game. These are the parts of the new economy that are the best, I think.