OK, it seems so many commercials dance around the words Super Bowl. Why exactly is that? And if it’s not allowed, why can the local monstor truck rally say they are the Super Bowl of Motor Sports?
E3
IIRC the NFL has the term trademarked in some way. If you said “super bowl munchie sale” you would have to pay a royalty or licencing fee to the nfl. Thus stores and commercials saying “stock up for the big game”
Dunno the specifics…I may be wrong
They can’t, unless they’re so obscure that the NFL trademark police haven’t caught them yet.
See here.
Yes, the term “Super Bowl” is a registered trademark of the National Football League. The trademark was filed and registered in 1969. Interestingly enough, the NFL had to buy the trademark from the original owner, a manufacturer who came out with a football-type board game in December 1966, on the eve of the first Super Bowl.
Your local monster truck rally may get away with it because a) the producers of the commercial didn’t know that “Super Bowl” is a trademark, and/or b) the NFL’s lawyers weren’t aware of the monster truck rally commercial.
There are dozens of infringements that have been successfully squelched by the NFL, e.g., The Super Bowl of Poker, Souper Bowl.
So is the SDMB in violation because “Super Bowl” was mentioned in this thread? :eek:
Of course not. This is beyond even “fair use”. We aren’t even remotely trying to imply we have some sort of association or to turn a profit on the name.
Radio morning shows, famous for their inability to follow any rules (and probably tacitly encouraged by management to “skirt” those rules) always have tickets to give away. And they always say things like “Here are your tickets to the Big Game in Jacksonville this year. It’s the Eagles and the Patriots, you know you want to be there! Caller nine gets tickets.”
…and then caller nine gets on the line and the DJ says “You’re going to the SUPER BOWL!” and his wacky sidekick reminds him very broadly that the station’s going to get fined for that screw-up, and they talk for five minutes about why that is, while dubbing in fart noises over them saying the words “Super Bowl” so they don’t draw any more fines.
A local station in DC (if you believe there’s any such thing anymore) even touts itself as “the station that keeps getting fined for saying Super Bowl in this ad!”
Ridiculous.
Because this topic has been discussed so recently, I’ll close this thread and direct further comment to the earlier thread, linked to above by Freddy the Pig. It’s not because I’m afraid of the trademark police, I swear.
bibliophage
moderator GQ