I saw this as well, it only applies to sports apparel and goods:
> “Ohio State is pleased to have received a trademark for THE on branded products associated with and sold through athletics and collegiate channels,”
They don't literally have a trademark on the word. And if you follow sports the "THE Ohio State University" with an emphasis on "THE" is a thing that is associated with the university. They sell shirts with "THE" in all caps with the university colors and such.
I'd say that if you find this distasteful, I think you're better served arguing against patents and trademarks in general since this seems to my very biased eyes to be reasonable based on the current system we have.
>I'd say that if you find this distasteful, I think you're better served arguing against patents and trademarks in general since this seems to my very biased eyes to be reasonable based on the current system we have.
What better way to argue against the absurdity of many patents and trademarks, in general, than to argue against some entity being able to trademark the most common word in the English language!
It's a perfect example of how broken the entire space is.
> What better way to argue against the absurdity of many patents and trademarks, in general, than to argue against some entity being able to trademark the most common word in the English language!
> IC 025. US 022 039. G & S Clothing, namely, t-shirts, baseball caps and hats; all of the foregoing being promoted, distributed, and sold through channels customary to the field of sports and collegiate athletics. FIRST USE: 20050800. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050800.
Funny enough, I actually know that it's in the context of clothing! Even better, I've spent a non-trivial amount of time dealing with trademark lawyers and getting a better grasp of trademark and patent law in the past several years -- so despite what some people seem to think, I'm not a complete idiot who is just misunderstanding everything.
> Funny enough, I actually know that it's in the context of clothing! Even better, I've spent a non-trivial amount of time dealing with trademark lawyers and getting a better grasp of trademark and patent law in the past several years -- so despite what some people seem to think, I'm not a complete idiot who is just misunderstanding everything.
You made none of that clear in your comment. Your comment read like you think no common words should not be trademarkable, so it would be interesting to know where you think the boundary should be and why it should be there.
> And I still think this is absurd.
We'll, to me, it doesn't seem any more absurd than Apple being able to trademark the word "Apple." The word identifies them in certain narrow contexts, so it makes sense that they can gain the right to prevent others from impersonating them in those narrow contexts, so long as any prior use is respected.
This misunderstands trademarks. Trademarks don’t mean you own the word or words being trademarked, they mean that you successfully registered the word as representing your business/firm/trade in the categories your business operates in. There’s no need for them to be unique words, Apple, Ghost, Monster, Bang (sorry my mind is stuck on energy drinks) are all trademarked.
It’s the legal equivalent of having the name “the” on NPM.
So, if I am misunderstanding, can you explain to me what happens if I have some sportswear that I sell which has the word "the" on it, written in capital letters?
For example, sportswear that says "THE SPORTSBALL TEAM".
Almost certainly nothing, even if this university were to attempt to enforce its trademark against you. The legal test for trademark violations in the United States requires that consumers are reasonably likely to be confused about the origin of the product.
The fact that they can attempt to enforce it is a big part of the problem.
Frivolous trademark and patent lawsuits is a whole damn industry, built upon milking money out of people who cannot reasonably afford to go through an entire trademark/patent dispute without going bankrupt - so they either give up what could potentially be a completely valid use case, or pay some sort of licensing fee they don't need to.
Anyone can attempt to enforce anything against anyone, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. Of course frivolous lawsuits and asymmetrical legal costs is a general problem of many modern legal systems, and I'm fine with general arguments about this problem. But this is clearly being presented as some extreme ridiculous example of a bad trademark, when it's very much not.
>Any one can attempt to enforce anything against anyone, so I'm not quite sure what you mean.
I mean that prior to the granting of this trademark, OSU could not send lawyers my way if I put "THE" on a hat.
Now they can.
>Of course frivolous lawsuits and asymmetrical legal costs is a general problem of many modern legal systems, and I'm fine with general arguments about this problem.
General arguments are usually bolstered by specific examples.
>But this is clearly being presented as some extreme ridiculous example of a bad trademark, when it's very much not.
I find it worrisome that so many people think trademarking the word "THE" is somehow not a bad trademark.
What the hell do you consider a bad trademark, if not just the word "the"?
> I mean that prior to the granting of this trademark, OSU could not send lawyers my way if I put "THE" on a hat. Now they can.
No, prior to the granting of this trademark it was still physically possible for their lawyers to threaten you. They wouldn't have had any legal standing, of course, but they still won't have any legal standing unless your products are likely to confuse consumers.
> General arguments are usually bolstered by specific examples.
Yes, but this is not a specific example of the general argument.
> I find it worrisome that so many people think trademarking the word "THE" is somehow not a bad trademark.
It is not a bad trademark. It is a mark that in some specific circumstances (specified in the trademark) is likely to lead consumers to believe a product's origin is Ohio State University. In those circumstances, it's absolutely reasonable to enforce the trademark. In any other circumstances where consumers are not likely to be confused about the product's origin, no trademark violation has occurred. Again, this is how all trademarks work.
> What the hell do you consider a bad trademark, if not just the word "the"?
One example of a bad trademark would be a mark that does not indicate to consumers anything about a product's origin.
I'm sure you see the need for a trademark system* so you can reliably buy products that you like and not fraudulent imitations. Try to make up a set of rules that give you the features you want from a trademark system and which don't have the features you don't want. That's what the trademark system we have is an attempt to do.
*even if you don't see the need for a trademark system, what matters is whether a majority of everybody else does, which it's pretty easy to see they do in a consumerist society.
It would be an issue if the shirt was only THE in all caps, and nothing else. And even then it might not be an issue if it were in pink and orange (although it still might).
The analogy with npm works: thesportsballteam is a distinct package.
The possibility that I can't put "THE", literally the most common word, on a hat or other sportswear sort of makes my point. Absolutely absurd trademark.
No, it's not absurd, and you can still put the word "the" on clothing so long as consumers are not likely to mistake your products as originating from Ohio State University. Any sensationalist portrayal of this or any other trademark as "owning a word," or "owning a color," etc. completely misses the point of trademarks.
>you can still put the word "the" on clothing so long as consumers are not likely to mistake your products as originating from Ohio State University
It feels like half the people replying here have never been the victim of over-zealous patent and/or trademark lawyers before.
OSU just needs to sue whoever puts "THE" on whatever they want, claim that it will confuse people, and then the poor bloke who put "THE" on his coffee mug or whatever has to spend thousands of dollars proving to the courts that a coffee mug wont be confused with a football team. And of course it would never be confused for a football team. Yet, they still have to go through the motions, spend the money, or cease & desist. It happens frequently, frequently enough that there are lawyers specifically known for patent and trademark trolling!
Just make the arguments about fundamental problems with the legal system. This is a sensational portrayal of a specific trademark that riles people up because it involves an extremely common English word, but of course anyone who has read about trademarks for a few minutes knows that this is nothing at all like "owning the word 'the'" or "having the right to sue anyone who puts the word 'the' on any clothing."
I think the test here is whether or not I can sell a shirt with "THE" printed on it without using the font or colors. I, for instance, would like one as an ironic rejection of this already ironic t-shirt. https://topatoco.com/products/qc-teh
>I’m not sure you’re engaging with the previous comment.
What do you mean?
I understand that some people associate "THE" with OSU. That's great, really. That does not mean they should be granted a trademark on the most common word in the English language across an entire category of clothing (or, for anything).
Capitalized or not, whether you like football or not, and whether you think it's reasonably associated with OSU or not is immaterial. They were granted a trademark on the most common word in the English language, and that's dumb.
I’m not sure I’ve ever in my life seen a sports garment (or any garment, actually) with solely the word “the” printed on it. So to object on the ground that it is “common” seems pretty shaky. If they tried to go after any use of the word on garment, that would be an obvious overreach. But establishing a trademark on the use of it by itself, given the lack of prior use, sounds reasonable.
One would be, Richard Bland College of The College of William & Mary. I'd point out "The College of William & Mary" except it is no longer in their (e: W&M's) branding standards, but it is the official name since it's on the royal charter. Which was granted in 1693. I wonder if that came up in the review.
They're not prevented from doing anything. WM sells a "the" t-shirt, OSU sues, WM counter files an anti slapp suit, proves "the" is just a word. Profits from t-shirt sales, profits from lawsuit damages, instant fucking win win.
Windows is trademarked for certain things, like pink is trademarked for sugar replacement packets - this is not a problem. There are still plenty of places that sell things called windows without legal hassle, and plenty of things that are pink without legal hassle.
Trademarks are usually restricted to tiny, tiny slices of the complete, generic meaning of the trademarked term.
Exactly how many sports clothing items were being sold with only the word "THE" (all caps) on them?
Is just reasonable association enough? Doesn't have to be unique, or distinguishable in some way? After all, if you watch nationally televised Football games, tons of players say they're from "the" X university. Thomas Davis says "The" University of Georgia here, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYoW8J9wRrI&t=20s (20 sec in).
Davis would later go on to play for The Washington Football Team.
Despite my family being fans of college football and going to a college that has the main college football rivalry in my state, I have no memory or inclination of there being any association between THE and OSU. I'm not certain I can agree it is a reasonable association.
Went to a national champion college football school and everyone just says Ohio State. I've never heard THE used to refer to OSU in my life but maybe I'm not a big enough fan (or care about big 10 football over the sec).
Considering they were in a fight with fashion brand Marc Jacobs, it really sounds like your emphasis on the association with the school name isn't as close as you claim.
They really do seem to have a trademark on the word "the" when associated with clothing, which is profoundly stupid. It is not a case of trademarking their school name with an article in front, but just the article itself.
I don't feel like looking for the actual trademark or court documents.
This is, of course, how all trademarks work. A trademark violation only occurs if a consumer is reasonably likely to be confused about the origin of a product.
That may be, but just make the actual argument against trademarks or for a massive overhaul of the trademark system. Don't make sensational arguments about how absurd it is "for a university to own one of the most common words in the English language" when that's not true and when your actual point is "there are some fundamental problems with our trademark system."
> I'd say that if you find this distasteful, I think you're better served arguing against patents and trademarks in general since this seems to my very biased eyes to be reasonable based on the current system we have.
If anything I find trademarks to be the least unreasonable part of the whole IP nonsense.
As an example, it seems absurd to me that Disney gets to decide in which works Spiderman can or can't appear (or is that Sony? Why??) when that character is part of our shared culture. At the same time, if anyone can put Spiderman in their stuff, you should at least be able to tell which version of Spiderman you are seeing and if it is an "official" production or an alternate take, and it seems like some form of Trademark could help here.
Related, a bakery in the Bay Area trademarked "mochi muffins" and was sending C&D letters to other bakeries. This left a bad taste in the mouths of many customers, and after a series of articles in the SF Chronicle, [1] the bakery promised to abandon the trademark.
As a former lawyer, albeit one who never specialized in trademark, I was surprised they were able to pass the bar of descriptiveness. You can't trademark "red chair" for use marketing a red chair since it's just describing the thing.
"The The"
Yes, this is true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The.
They exist since 1979 . They made it to position 2 in the UK chart.
The obviously have a trademark for "The The" in music.
I used to work in search engines. When you decide to implement stop words, one of the first you define for English is of course the word "the". And then you learn of the band "The The" and you have to design a completely different architecture in order to handle exceptions to the stop word list ;-)
They say the "The" is so important to their brand yet everyone in the article, the comments, the quote from OSU in the article, all use "Ohio State" or "OSU".
If you think OSU won't see red (see what I did there?) over a shirt with "The University" on it, I think you don't know lawyers.
In fact, I wish that Texas would deliberately do this, just to rub it in OSU's face. But then, I don't have to pay for their bills for the lawsuit that would happen...
I'm fine with nobody else being able to sell an apple computer.
AAPL's repeated stepping on the Beatles' record label and holding company called Apple's trademarks were pretty heinous though (so far as trademark abuses go) until they were resolved by AAPL buying out the trademark completely for perhaps half a billion dollars in 2007.
The whole purpose of a trademark is being able to own the name of your product so nobody else can pretend to be you and confuse/steal/defraud your customers.
That doesn't mean that AAPL can stop anybody from selling fruit or calling a completely unrelated product something apple related.
Oh I get it, I just don't ascribe to this concept at all. I believe a word, symbol or logo should be truly unique before some legal restriction could be placed on it.
Yeah, I feel trademarks should be limited to things like "Farmer Bob's Old Tyme Remedy" or random strings of characters rather than simple, single words.
Exactly. Apple was already taken by the fruit. I see taking "ownership" of common words a form of forced irrational compliance and to some degree a form of extortion at least by my definition of extortion.
So again, do you think it should be legal to deliberately deceive consumers that a product you produce is actually produced by a well-known reputable company? Should I be allowed to sell my own smartphones using packaging that clearly indicates that the famous company Apple produced the phone? Or are you saying that, since the word "apple" existed before the company Apple, that anyone ought to be allowed to sell counterfeit Apple smartphones?
I am saying that Apple the current company and any other company squatting on common terms must be ordered to change their name and in this case they must provide a dozen fresh Apples to anyone that ever purchased an Apple product. A valid name might be "Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne's and Steve Wozniak's Computers of Los Altos" where the company was founded. Companies should not be deceiving people with cool or hip sounding company names. The names should be descriptive and entirely boring.
If I were diktat Tim Apple could have "Apple's Computers" and trademark that, but the short form of "Apple" no, even if people used that name in speech.
I do a lot of busywork and I still can’t imagine being the lawyer tasked with fighting for this or even the person tasking that lawyer. What a horrible waste of time for all involved.
Somebody in the chain at some point shoulda stood up and said, “Nah, this is stupid,” and walked out.
As an OSU Alum, it's embarrassing how much of a cult mentality exists around OSU sports. This is literally the dumbest use of university resources and reflects what the admin (an ever growing, bloated bureaucracy) considers important.
...more interesting part of this article for the people arguing against it is THE granting of THE Marc Jacobs trademark, as that one is not restricted to the athletic market.
In some contexts (ex: vocal performances), the word may be pronounced 'thee' prior to words beginning with vowels, and 'thuh' prior to words beginning with consonants.
Grew up in Ohio, it’s THEE <pause> Ohio State University and it’s reached the stage where people use it pretty much as a joke just like “Butt for Ohio State.”
Just don't confused Miami University (Ohio) with University of Miami (Florida).
There was a comment a few days ago from a sad European student that had made that mistake hoping for a university with plentiful beaches and nice warm weather.
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) just for overkill.
I would also like to draw attention to the distinction between Wake Forest University (of Winston-Salem, NC, via GSO airport) and Wake Forest, NC (closer to RDU airport). The latter was of course the home of the original Wake Forest Baptist Manual Labor Institute.
I’ve had to pick someone up at the wrong airport, you see. It was quite a drive.
This is THE shittiest ruling. I am fine with IP in most cases but THE court is wrong on this one.
Oh and tangentially related but Ohio state is super fucking annoying with their constant insistence that their name be prefixed with "the". It's like the inverse of Apple demanding their product be called just "iphone".
They have THE worst superiority complex for a school who still has more losses to Michigan than wins.
I saw this as well, it only applies to sports apparel and goods:
> “Ohio State is pleased to have received a trademark for THE on branded products associated with and sold through athletics and collegiate channels,”
They don't literally have a trademark on the word. And if you follow sports the "THE Ohio State University" with an emphasis on "THE" is a thing that is associated with the university. They sell shirts with "THE" in all caps with the university colors and such.
I'd say that if you find this distasteful, I think you're better served arguing against patents and trademarks in general since this seems to my very biased eyes to be reasonable based on the current system we have.