The Ohio State University Officially Trademarks the Word 'THE' - Slashdot
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The Ohio State University Officially Trademarks the Word 'THE'
The Ohio State University Officially Trademarks the Word 'THE' (wsj.com) 77
Posted by msmash
on Friday June 24, 2022 @02:05PM from the how-about-that dept.schwit1 writes: The Ohio State University has successfully trademarked the word "THE," in a victory for the college and its branding that is sure to produce eye rolls from Michigan fans and other rivals. Stating the full name of the school has become a point of pride for Ohio State's athletes when introducing themselves on television during games. The three-letter article "THE" has also become an important part of the school's merchandise and apparel. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved Ohio State's application Tuesday. The trademark applies to T-shirts, baseball caps and hats. "'THE' has been a rallying cry in the Ohio State community for many years," said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the university. Ohio State registered the word as a trademark to protect the university's brand, Mr. Johnson said. Ohio State's trademark and licensing program makes about $12.5 million annually for the university, which funds student scholarships and university programs, he said. "Universities historically are very particular about their trademarks, and they go to a lot of lengths to enforce their trademarks," said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney, who noted Ohio State's trademark application on Twitter. "There is a lot of value in a university's brand."
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Trademark the word "Ohio". Now that would be funny.
IIRC, trademarks need to be narrow. As in can only target certain things.
Like, is this a case of no other college/semi-pro/pro sports team trying to add a "The" in front, but there can still be a The Bob Burger Joint.
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Every team is preceded by the word "the". Just read the sports section or listen to the TV. You'll hear it EVERYWHERE.
The San Francisco 49ers
The LA Lakers.
The Golden State Warriors
The Boston Celtics
The Miami DolphinsIn EVERY case, when referring to the team, you precede it with the word "the" because, even though its mede up of multiple people, the team itself is a singular. That's how grammar works. This is a seriously stupid-ass trademark that shouldn't have been granted. And really, OSU and its lawy
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You have used our trademarked word 11 times in your post. Our licensing fee invoice is on its way.
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...the fuck?
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even though its mede up of multiple people, the team itself is a singular. That's how American grammar works.
FTFY. It's common in British English to refer to sports teams in the plural.
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This wouldn't even be a story if people understood what trademarks are. It's not a copyright (which actually gives you ownership over a certain expression of an art form), it's just a logo. Trademarks have to be distinguishing and within a narrow field. So having the word "THE" for a University does not preclude someone from making a homeopathic medicine clinic called "Therapeutic Homeopathic Excellence (THE)" or an aerospace company calling their new passenger plane "THE" because those are so totally different fields of use that a customer wouldn't confuse them.
So let's segway that in to what a trademark is. It's a visual representation of your company and/or product to distinguish it from a competitor's product. So it's about making sure that people know what the hell they're buying; it's about products and customers and how it's represented. In fact, part of getting the trademark approved is you have to submit a picture of the product as it's sold showing you're using the logo in act of commerce. it also has to be unique and distinguishing but not descriptive. So for example, the couldn't trademark "University" when they're a university, because that's descriptive. However "The" has a unique connotation apparently to THE Ohio State, and that's what they proved.
And again, it comes down to commerce. If, as the articles claim, that THE has become kind of a rallying cry for The Ohio State University to the point where they actually sell merchandise with the word on it and their students and alumni understand what it means and it's contextual to The Ohio State University, then the trademark actually clamps down on anyone trying to leverage the THE connotation by selling merchandise that the University doesn't benefit from, undercutting the university's sales of it's merchandise. So in the end it's more likely a way to clamp down on counterfeit stuff.
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Segway is a trademark, I think you meant segue.
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LOL kudos. You're entirely right about that.
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It seems a gray area at best - the World Wrestling Federation lost a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund, and ended up changing their name to WWE. Who knows, maybe they could have made WWF in a totally different shape and been fine, IANAL, but on the surface trademarks seem to sometimes go beyond the legitimate protection of artistic expression.
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Consumers are not likely to confuse "The University of Texas" with "The Ohio State University( aka THE)". Therefore the University of Texas could still sell shirts that say "The University of Texas".
On the other hand, consumers in Columbus, Ohio seeing a red and white shirt emblazoned with just "THE" will identify this shirt with THE, the nickname of The Ohio State University. Therefore only the university (and their licensees) can sell those.
The question with trademark is always "likelihood of consumer c
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Interestingly, consumers not familiar with Ohio State will think "what in the world?" After receiving an explanation of the connection to Ohio State, consumers would then think "what in the world?" followed by "really?" followed by "that's stupid."
I get the desire to distinguish the acronym from other state universities in Oregon and Oklahoma. However, the use of "the" sounds a bit pretentious. Sort of like introducing oneself as "the Mr. Smith." It also is a bit nonsensical. After all, is there anothe
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I think the most useful part of this story is it points to the limited language skills and creativity of the school. If I were hiring, I would definitely put these graduates on the no hire list.
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It's a state university; they have to be like that because they're not allowed to have meaningful admissions standards because of the way they are funded partly out of tax revenue. They have to accept basically anyone who lives in the state and can cough up a certificate of high school attendance, and so their requirements for graduation have to be dumbed down correspondingly, lest they have an insanely high dropout rate (which would scare away students even worse than a high graduated-but-learned-nothing
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I should note that state schools can and often do have _specific programs_ that are non-trivial to get into and have meaningful academic standards; successfully completing one of these programs, is a meaningful accomplishment and a meaningful job qualificiation. But these are pretty much always graduate-level programs.
A bachelor's degree from a state university, however, is poop on a stick, barely more meaningful than a high school diploma. -
The key difference between a state school and a private school is the state school does have specific requirements for entry. The may be low, but they exists. Private schools on the other hand merely increase the bribes required if the standards are not met. If you can buy a building, or the add is ink officer a new Mercedes, your kid is in. That is how Trump got a degree from a highly prestigious college.
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Trademarks have "Categories". a Trademark within the declared "Category" is *only* enforceable within that Category. it is perfectly acceptable for a... a... Chiropracter to Trademark "THE (Twist His Enema)" within the specific category associated with the Medical Profession for example, and that Trademark would have absolutely nothing to do with Ohio's Trademark of "THE", which is in Category... Clothing GS0251.
https://uspto.report/TM/885719... [uspto.report]
so you can't have just the word "THE" on "Clothing, namely, t
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Ok. Cool.
So this is not as crazy as everyone is making seem.
The crazy part is all the Buck Eye fans shouting this enough for it to become a thing.-
I think you mean "for it to become a THEng".
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But the Twist His Enema chiropractor can have T-Shirts and hats with his trademark "THE" on them selling through ebay for example? How about a sports team called "The One" selling "THE 1" branded sports apparel?
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if there's the risk of them being "confused" with Ohio's Category "clothing", then no.
almost certainly not, if "THE" is in capital letters like that.
it comes down to "Confusion" could someone who has no idea about Twist-Chiropracter go "oh, i thought that was an Ohio Sports T-shirt", and if the answer's "yes" then it's a Trademark violation.
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so you can't have just the word "THE" on "Clothing,
unless you repeat it, front and then back perhaps?
Then when challenged, you say it's the name of a uk beat combo from the late 70s on.
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It's specially for clothing such as hats, T-shirts etc. Actually rather narrow.
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> Like how they are allowed to use the word "The"
That's not the interesting question. The interesting question is how they're allowed to stop _other_ people from using the word "The"...
> IIRC, trademarks need to be narrow.
Depends, but mostly yes, when the trademark is a pre-existing word (to say nothing of a bloody _article_ for crying out loud), it's going to have to be very narrow indeed.
If your trademark is something like "Pepto Bismol", which has really never had any other potential meanings exce -
The trademark protects the usage of uniquely "THE" on an article of clithing relating to college sports.
It does not prevent a college team to call themselves "The football team at $localcollege" or even selling shirts with that name on. But it would prevent them from selling shirts with only the word "THE" on it or anything that can be confused to be the same thing. For instance if they were trying to seel a baseball cap with THE in font 300 and "footbal team at $localcollege" in font 7, then that would lik
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