Bama threatens Clay Travis ..

[engie]

I'm thinking you don't understand Travis' business model at all. His voice and brand gets stronger every time one of these companies goes to war with him.

 

[olblue.sixpack]

There's a reason why Clay Travis has a law degree but doesn't practice law. While the script A utilized on the shirt is slightly different from the University's protected mark, it is deceptively similar. The University wins this one. And they are exceedingly protective of their marks. Exceedingly. Ask Daniel Moore (even though he has had some success fighting them).

And the reason is he has built the Outkick brand into a money machine. I met Clay when he was still practicing law and doing some local radio. Nice enough guy - very smart. I could tell he was a real entrepreneur.

Not a big fan these days. I can’t tell if he’s trying to be the next Howard Stern or Al Franken. If its the latter, he’s going to have to knock off a couple of big names to do it - including a former Dawg.

 

[aTotal360]

Yup. His beef with ESPN has been a huge boon for his business. And if ESPN actually replaces John Skipper with CNN's Zucker, he have another field day.

 

[Dawgzilla]

I'm pretty sure trademark laws don't work qualitatively as in "I thought that was licensed apparel". There has to be something like 7 or 9 degrees of difference from the symbol in question. I think Clay is probably right. Alabama has a huge staff of trademark/copyright lawyers on retainer and they are simply throwing something against the wall to prove they are working.

Actually, that is almost exactly the trademark standard....The question is whether the accused infringing use would be likely to cause confusion in the marketplace as to the origin, sponsorship or approval of the goods by another entity. Basically, whether consumers would likely be confused as to whether those shirts were sold, licensed, or approved by the University. It's a very gray area, and depends upon the specific facts of each case. There are several common factors that courts consider in determining likelihood of confusion, and similarity of the marks is just one factor. So, we can point out all kinds of differences between the script A on the shirts and the script A that Alabama uses, but that just addresses one factor.

BTW, who started calling it a "cursive A", Travis or the CLC lawyers? It is not a "cursive A". Not even close. It is a stylized A, or a script A, but no one writes a cursive A that way....