Two years ago, we wrote about a ridiculous situation in which the NY Yankees (disclosure: I'm a lifelong Yankees fan) were opposing a trademark application by a small company who sought to trademark "Baseball's Evil Empire" for the sake of selling merchandise with that brand on it.
As we noted at the time, it wasn't that long ago that it was considered perfectly legal for anyone to make t-shirts and other merchandise bearing the names of your favorite sports teams. But then the trademark lawyers got involved and, with sports leagues seeing the potential for lots of money, they
shut that down. This seems to be another case of that sort of thing, but with a twist. In this case, the NY Yankees, who were opposing the trademark, have never used the term "evil empire" to reference the Yankees. Instead, the team was called that a decade ago by an executive of the rival Red Sox. In fact, in its own opposition, the Yankees even made the point that the term had a "negative connotation" and they didn't like it -- so it seems extra bizarre to then take "ownership" of the term via trademark.
But, in this case,
the Yankees still won. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled that even though the team has never used the name, and even though it's a pretty generic and overused term, there is a likelihood of confusion and that people now associate the term with the Yankees. While I could see rejecting the term as not deserving any trademark at all, the idea that this is likely to cause confusion seems like a stretch. The team has shown no inclination in embracing the term (and its own filing showed that it felt the phrase was negative). The TTAB and the Yankees seemed to put a lot of weight in the fact that the Yankees sometimes use
Star Wars music to suggest they were directly embracing the term, but that seems extremely weak, at best.
There's also a good conversation at Mike Madison's
blog post on the story, in which someone notes that it would be fine if the TTAB made it clear that
no one should have the trademark, but in this case, the court seemed to act as if the Yankees have the trademark, despite having nothing to do with the phrase. It repeatedly refers to the phrase as if it were the Yankees' own mark.
Meanwhile, it appears that the company that originally filed for the trademark, Evil Empire Inc., isn't giving up either, claiming it will
continue making and providing Evil Empire gear, saying that the team "has never shown any indication that it plans to sue for trademark infringement over the use of the name on apparel." In other words, it's betting that despite blocking its own trademark application, the Yankees won't now go on to sue over Evil Empire's continued usage. That seems like a pretty big risk.
That said, the whole situation highlights (yet again) the nuttiness that is the end result of an "ownership society." Evil empire is a simple phrase that references
Star Wars. The idea that it alone should be controlled by the New York Yankees seems preposterous.
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