As I’ve noted in the past, the National Football League guards it’s intellectual property right interests over the Super Bowl very jealously. That’ s why you never see any retailer who isn’t an official sponsor or advertiser mention the Super Bowl in their ads for, say, big screen televisions, soda, or beer. Instead, they call it “the Big Game.”
The NFL demonstrated the extent to which it is willing to make people’s lives difficult to enforce it’s “rights” three years ago when it told churches across the country that they could not hold Super Bowl viewing parties even if they didn’t charge admission for them.
Now, the National Football League is claiming that it has exclusive rights over a phrase adopted by fans of the New Orleans Saints:
Count the National Football League among the growing members of Who Dat Nation. After all, they own the phrase — or so they say in cease and desist letters sent out to at least two local T-shirt retailers earlier this month.
In letters sent to Fleurty Girl and Storyville, the NFL ordered the retailers to stop selling a host of merchandise that it says violates state and federal trademarks held by the New Orleans Saints.
Among the long list of things the NFL says is off-limits without a licensing agreement are some obvious violations like the official logo of the Saints and the team’s name. But the one that stands out is “Who Dat.”
Who knew?
The NFL, noting a 1988 trademark the Saints registered with the Louisiana secretary of state, says it has exclusive rights to the phrase and demands that the retailers stop selling it.
“I was surprised,” Fleurty Girl owner Lauren Thom said. “I think everybody was.”
Thom’s shirts feature the phrase Who Dat written as one word with lowercase letters and preceded by a hash mark, a nod to the language of the social networking site Twitter. On Twitter, a hash mark followed by a word unifies all tweets on a specific topic. If a tweet, for instance, includes #whodat, it joins other posts on a page generally about Saints topics on Twitter.
“It was designed to unify the Who Dat Nation, not within a tweet, but through a shirt,” said Thom,
Perhaps sir, but you didn’t known who you were dealing with. Outside of Disney there is probably no entity that more aggressively pursues claimed cases of intellectual property theft than the NFL. And while this case is about as ridiculous as the time Disney went after a day care center, you probably have no defense.
January 29th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Like, huh?
I was in N’orluns many years ago, whenever the Sugar Bowl was the Gators vs Crimson Tide (I think). “Who Dat?” was spoken as some kind of catch phrase all over town for that game, too. Seems like a good case could be made that it’s not exclusive to the Saints.