From the law firm of Foster Garvey comes helpful reminders as to how ordinary purveyors of onion dip and ale can avoid attracting the attention of the National Football League on the occasion of the entity’s annual Big Game.
Legal Alert: Is Your Super Bowl Marketing Campaign Playing by the Rules? 5 Tips to Help You Avoid Getting a Penalty
With the Super Bowl coming up, it is important for brands looking to capitalize on football-themed promotions to remember that the terms “Super Bowl” and “Super Sunday” are registered trademarks guarded by the National Football League (NFL) more closely than a shutdown corner on a wide receiver.
Because there is a fine line between permissible fair uses of the phrases “Super Bowl” and “Super Sunday” (e.g., in on-air banter and news and sports reports) and impermissible promotional uses that may infringe the NFL’s trademarks, here are some reminders to keep you from going “offsides.”
Each year when the Solemn Occasion rolls around, I refrain from rooting for individual teams, and instead pull for local independent food and drink operators to make a few bucks from the public’s seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm for future brain injury creation.
Wait, I can use those words…can’t I?
The NFL’s self-important pomposity left me behind years ago, and it is ceaselessly annoying to consider a small business struggling to get by, but earnestly considering Foster Garvey’s admonitions lest a random strike by a corporate sporting monolith knocks them off kilter.
It’s a case for widespread civil disobedience, and probably already is, but I digress.
Even a serial Grinch like me evolves, and in recent years I’ve softened my stance and deign to watch an occasional pro game. The business of pro sports actually interests me to a greater degree than the action on the field, but like many people who never played the game apart from sandlot scruffling, the gladiatorial aspects can be mildly amusing just so long as we don’t confuse any of it with the U.S. Constitution (football is an elective, folks, not a required course).
Boys and girls, let’s be extra careful out there. Here is an article authored for my blog in 2013.
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