New England Patriots victims of trademark hubris

@Graham Dawson

Pot. Kettle. Etc.

If you're going to make a comment about a team being able to get into the Premiership, at least make sure you pick one that isn't actually in the Premiership and really doing quite well, otherwise you end up looking like a complete tit.

@ G Dawson

Aren't Man City already in the Premiership or are my facts also skewed?

@G Dawson

apart from your example being plain wrong as there are more than 19 games a season in the prem and man city are in the prem and have been for several years.

i think the argument is how can you trademark a numeric score or stat? i mean can man utd trademark 9-0 for their record score in the premiership match against ipswich?

also what happens if another team goes 19-0 are they in breach of trademark for calling it 19-0??

Other uses than rugby

Interestingly, 19 is the only score in the card game cribbage that is impossible to attain with a single hand under the maximum of 29 (four fives and a jack in the hand with the same suit as the turn-up). Hence, when scoring, saying 'Nineteen' means 'I got nothing'. 19 = 0. Ok, maybe not that interesting if you don't play cribbage.

Whether it has any relevance to trademark law I dunno, but it's pretty dubious to claim that the numbers 19 and 0 can only be associated with the Pastries or whatever they're called.

Re: Re: You What?

So what about someone winning 19-0 in rugby? Or in a single game of american football?

And if "how distinctive you suck c--ks" is what you need BEFORE you can trademark "you such c--ks", then how distinctively did the patriots play if they'd gotten 19-0? Would someone else winning 19-0 in a different way (like, say, using a different team..?) be clear? If someone was using "19-0" in a manner that wasn't to do with the patriots be clear because that's a distinctly different use of "19-0"?

And can we patent "three-nil" and stop the man C fans chanting it when they're beating the bottom of the league players? Smug gits....

Also in US sports

It seems to me that some years ago the basketball coach Pat Riley, then with the LA Lakers, trademarked "ThreePeat", only to find his team unable to win a third consecutive NBA championship.

NFL is big IP business

This is pretty interesting. Anyone know if the Miami Dolphins who claimed a similar record in 1972 ever did/considered this kind of thing?

I know I read something interesting about the NFL and SuperBowl related trademarks on WikiPedia a few weeks back.

see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl#NFL_trademark_issues

You really can't deny however that it was a great super-close game.

Well... great I guess only if you're a Giants fan.

Joshua Feinberg

Stupid quote

""It would have been a phrase that sporting fans would definitely have associated with the New England Patriots," he said."

I'm sure there are many (probably the majority) of sporting fans, even in the U.S., who would never equate "19-0" with the New England Patriots. Hell, 19-0 isn't even impressive in sports. It might be in American football. But 19-0 is quite possible, and not such a grand feat, in other sports such as hockey and baseball.

To even suggest that sporting fans would definitely have associated "19-0" with the New England Patriots is so ridiculous that this guy should be forced to wear the dunce cap in public so we know to avoid him.

Cart B4 da Horse

Maybe instead of setting themselves up for a lifelong royalties income they should have watched a bit more tape and figured out how to play against the Giants. Instead they got rocked in every facet of the game....lucky ?....the Patriots were lucky the score wasn't 31 -14. Sacked 5 times, knocked down 9 times, a dozen or so more pressures, 45 yards rushing.....the Patriots offense was dismal.

Few noticed that he Giants had their two best defensive players on the sidelines during the Patriots 4th quarter drive. The young Manning missed two wide open receivers who could have easily garnered big gains. I watched the game as a fan of neither team but it was as one sided a 3 point win as I have ever seen. The Patriots are a better team than they played. The primary reason for the loss was that they were badly outcoached.

Toomer got away with a blatant foul on his catch but the Patriots benefited from a TV timeout which gave them the opportunity to offer a challenge on the 12th man on field call. There was also a lot of blatant forearms to the head thrown by Patriots defense which wasn't called. Not to mention the Patriot's interception where the Giant's receiver picked the ball from a few inches off the turf and tossed it into the Patriot's defender's hands.

A fan of either side could argue that the other team got lucky breaks but there were well distributed on both sides. The way I saw the game was an erratic Giant's offense managed to score points on a pretty darn good defensive team. The Giant's defense however completely overwhelmed and dominated one of the best offensive units ever and that's how the game must be remembered. It was the most watched SB of all time and they played a game well deserving of the designation. Bellichek walking off the field, with one second left on the clock, was not the big deal it was made out to be by the press but was the biggest sour note of the day.

Sudden (if late) thought

If I were the Patriots (what a stupid name for a team - me, I've been a Manchester Nationalists fan since the Bristol BNP Members got relegated), I'd've been already been printing the '19-0' T-shirts and hats. Premature, maybe, but demand is going to be highest immediately after the win. Any amount of money is worth the outside possibility of being laughed at for counting chickens.

If a canny warehouse employee manages to sneak a box into his van before they're all incinerated, he could be making a lot of money on eBay from Giants fans looking for a sporting 'Dewey beats Truman' memento.