MLB Infringed A Trademark When Naming Nationals?
According to an article in today’s New York Times Major League Baseball may have infringed someone else’s trademark when they chose a name for the former Montreal Expos upon moving them to Washington. (Read the Times article here or a followup report from ESPN here.) Apparently the name nationals was already trademarked by another company. This is not a good mark for MLB wich takes infringement on their own trademarks very seriously. You’ve got to love it. MLB is forcing blogs to shut down for violating their trademarks but now it turns out that they may have been violating someone else’s.
I should point out in fairness to MLB that there may have been an agreement in place to allow them to use the Nationals name before they started to use it. Both sides are saying different things about the status of the agreement at the time the team began to use the name. I guess we’ll know more as this case is hear by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
I like stories like this that are a little off the beaten path but still related to baseball (and other things I occassionally discuss here) so if you find a similar story feel free to let me know by either leaving a comment or emailing me using at the email address in the Contact section of the sidebar.
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