I’m no Lance Ito but I do pretend to be a legal eagle once in a while. Much is ado about the Celtics slogan for the finals: “Gotta Beat LA.” We all know it’s lame (I’m not going to get into that) but I figure there has to be one or many reasons for this.
While ESPN was laughing about the matter and Screaming A Smith was screaming about it, I was sitting at home knowing that it had to do something with money.
I did a trademark search for “Beat LA” and uncovered the following live trademark:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78348009
It’s funny. In the Prosecution History it looks as recent as a week ago there was a activity related to opposition in the matter. My guess is that the Celtics PR and marketing people were waiting to see what became of this before they printed “Beat LA” shirts and ended up paying royalty fees to the registered trademark owner.
In the end, the fans got their money’s worth. Definitely not with the t-shirts but the Celtics won the game. Makes me wonder what the Lakers are going to do for their home fans.
-bB
they won DESPITE the tshirts horrible. it’s so obvious they want to use that trademark, but can’t. Go LA! I can’t believe i’m saying that.
Beat L.A. Who owns the trade mark to that slogan? Sabean up in SF?
His team never seems to beat L.A. anyways…..he should just loan it to the Celtics for a week haha.