BU Law Prof: Tom Brady Fumbles Trademark Request
Patriots QB wants to register “Tom Terrific,” baseball legend Tom Seaver’s nickname.
Hey @uspto, with all due respect to @TomBrady…There’s only one #TomTerrific to us. #LGM #Mets pic.twitter.com/CvzWY4hu7Y
— New York Mets (@Mets) June 3, 2019
Here in New England, Tom Brady can pretty much walk on Charles River water, thanks to six Super Bowl rings.
But in New York? He’ll always be a pariah, as he was reminded this week.
On May 24, Brady’s TEB Capital Management Company filed a request with the US Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the name “Tom Terrific,” since, after all, Tom has been one pretty terrific football player for the New England Patriots. The problem is that the New York Mets long-retired legendary Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver was nicknamed “Tom Terrific” during a lengthy career that saw him win 311 games (198 with the Mets).
Naturally, New York sports fans had one word for Brady after learning of his application: Fuhgeddaboutit. “Go back to deflating footballs, you jerk,” the New York Post quoted one fan as saying. Twitter was equally unkind, and even the Mets weighed in.
With so much venom directed at Brady, BU Today couldn’t resist dialing up University trademark expert Stacey Dogan, a School of Law professor of intellectual property and internet law and trademark and copyright law and associate dean for academic affairs. Before entering academia, she worked as a trademark and antitrust lawyer. So this is her game.
And in Dogan’s opinion, Brady fumbled. Big-time.
“I think it should be rejected,” she says of his request to own “Tom Terrific.”
And this is coming from an admitted, though “fair-weather,” Patriots fan, she says.
“Tom Seaver, the fact that he was known as ‘Tom Terrific’ doesn’t necessarily mean he had trademark rights to the name ‘Tom Terrific,’ nor does it mean he should have applied for trademark registration for that term,” Dogan says. “But the fact that he was known as ‘Tom Terrific’ should prevent Tom Brady from having a legal right to register the term.”
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