Offseason Win for Cowboys
by Andrew Monheit on April 7, 2009
As a life-long Eagles fan I have always detested hearing the Dallas Cowboys called “America’s Team”. Unfortunately for me and fans for the other 31 NFL teams, the nickname has been made legally official by a federal court in Texas.
The nickname was given to the Cowboys by an executive at NFL named Bob Ryan who used the phrase to title the series of highlights of Dallas’ 1978 season. Ever since, “America’s Team” has been used to describe the Dallas Cowboys, but it now goes beyond just an obnoxious nickname for arguably the most widely hated (and liked for that matter) team in professional sports. It officially became a trademarked named after a Dallas federal district court ruled in the Cowboys favor on March 30th.
According to a recent article on Law.com, “Judge Ed Kinkeade of the Dallas federal district court granted the Cowboys’ motion for summary judgement against a Minnesota company called America’s Team Properties.” The clothing company tried unsuccessfully for several years to sell the team the rights to the phrase. After these futile attempts, America’s Team Properties began sending cease and desist letters and began legal action with the Patent and Trademark Office.
What Judge Kinkeade found was that the Cowboys possessed common law rights to the phrase because it was widely used in association with the Dallas Cowboys franchise. He continued to say he believed America’s Team Properties was just trying to make money off of the identical slogan. The Law.com story quotes Robert Raskopf, a partner from the firm Quinn Emanuel Urguhart Oliver & Hedges and who has also represented the NFL for many years, agreeing with the Judge’s ruling by saying, “The U.S. is a country in which trademark use trumps trademark protection.”
It winds up being another win for Big D but they deserved it this time. For almost 30 years they have been known as America’s Team and now it is official, legally that is.
As a life-long Eagles fan I have always detested hearing the Dallas Cowboys called “America’s Team”. Unfortunately for me and fans for the other 31 NFL teams, the nickname has been made legally official by a federal court in Texas.
The nickname was given to the Cowboys by an executive at NFL named Bob Ryan who used the phrase to title the series of highlights of Dallas’ 1978 season. Ever since, “America’s Team” has been used to describe the Dallas Cowboys, but it now goes beyond just an obnoxious nickname for arguably the most widely hated (and liked for that matter) team in professional sports. It officially became a trademarked named after a Dallas federal district court ruled in the Cowboys favor on March 30th.
According to a recent article on Law.com, “Judge Ed Kinkeade of the Dallas federal district court granted the Cowboys’ motion for summary judgement against a Minnesota company called America’s Team Properties.” The clothing company tried unsuccessfully for several years to sell the team the rights to the phrase. After these futile attempts, America’s Team Properties began sending cease and desist letters and began legal action with the Patent and Trademark Office.
What Judge Kinkeade found was that the Cowboys possessed common law rights to the phrase because it was widely used in association with the Dallas Cowboys franchise. He continued to say he believed America’s Team Properties was just trying to make money off of the identical slogan. The Law.com story quotes Robert Raskopf, a partner from the firm Quinn Emanuel Urguhart Oliver & Hedges and who has also represented the NFL for many years, agreeing with the Judge’s ruling by saying, “The U.S. is a country in which trademark use trumps trademark protection.”
It winds up being another win for Big D but they deserved it this time. For almost 30 years they have been known as America’s Team and now it is official, legally that is.
posted by The Gryphon at 8:22 PM
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