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February 2017
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Nine Years Later, Patriots Get '19-0' And 'Perfect Season' Trademarks, Despite Doing Neither

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Nine years ago we had a post about some of the ridiculousness surrounding trademarks and the Super Bowl (a popular topic this time of year). In particular, we mocked the fact that the New England Patriots had filed for some trademarks in the week before the Super Bowl. Then, as now, the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl, but that year they had done it with a perfect record, winning all 16 games in the regular season and the first two playoff games to go 18-0. They were heavily favored to win the Super Bowl, and had filed for trademarks on both "Perfect Season" and "19-0." Of course, the NY Giants came away with quite the upset and sent the Patriots home as losers. Given that, we were kind of surprised a few months later to discover that the Patriots were still seeking the trademark on "19-0," despite the fact that its actual record for the season was a demoralizing 18-1.I pretty much stopped following it after that and assumed that the Patriots probably gave up as well. But, no. ESPN now tells us that nine years later, the US Patent and Trademark Office has approved the trademarks. No. Really:

Though it has been nine years since the Patriots nearly achieved an undefeated season, the team just now has gotten around to trademarking "Perfect Season" and "19-0."The Patriots have gone through the process with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and, in December, trademarked the two slogans through their parent company, The Kraft Group, online records show.
Of course, you might wonder how the hell the Patriots can claim "use in commerce" for these, since the team didn't have a perfect season and didn't go 19-0.
The one complication with those two filings is that, while thousands of T-shirts were printed commemorating a perfect Patriots season, none of them were ever sold. Emblazoned with an event that didn't occur, they instead were shipped to other countries.
The rationale for getting "Perfect Season" is even more bizarre. The Patriots claimed they "licensed" the phrase to apply to a high school championship.
Having to prove that they deserved the right to the phrase, the Patriots apparently licensed "Perfect Season" to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, which produced a DVD of the 2015 state football championship game between Xaverian Brothers and Central Catholic high schools. Xaverian prevailed, winning its 24th straight game (spanning two seasons).
Voila. Use in commerce?Of course, it still makes you wonder why the hell the Patriots still wanted to trademark 19-0. It's not like they really have much use for it at this point. If they eventually do have a 19-0 season... well, then it's still a dumb idea. And are the Patriots now going to seek to block any other NFL team from trying to sell T-shirts if they were to have a 19-0 season? Or are they assuming that only the Patriots could possibly ever achieve such feats?Either way, when we first reported on the 19-0 trademark application, we noted that the NY Post had gotten snarky and filed a trademark application for 18-1. That application was eventually abandoned... as were five other similar attempts to trademark 18-1.
Except for one. As you might notice, that top one was granted. A guy named Raymond William Mort got the trademark for "World Chumps 18-1" back in 2012 (he applied right after the Super Bowl in 2008). Congrats Mr. Mort.
I'm not sure if he's actually selling T-shirts or anything, but he did create this lovely graphic:
I'm sure it's selling like gangbusters.

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Court Tosses Lawsuit Brought By Brother And Sister Against Take-Two Interactive Over NBA2K Face Scans

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As face-scanning technology has progressed, its use in video games has become more and more realistic. While several games make use of this to transport the gamer directly into the game they play, one of the best to do this is 2K Sports' NBA2K series. By using a web camera or your smartphone, you can take a scan of your face and import it into the game to create your own avatar to ball out on the court with NBA stars. I've done this, and it's awesome.It's that face-scanning feature that was the subject of an attempted lawsuit by a brother and sister in Illinois, however, who argued that Take-Two was violating the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act, which seeks to ensure that businesses that store biometric data for their customers are protecting that data and not using it in ways the customer had never intended. The idea is that if your bank requires a fingerprint to access your account, and either loses that data to theft or uses that data for some other purpose, the public can get monetary and injunctive relief from the court. To do so, however, the plaintiff must suffer actual harm from a violation of BIPA.Ricardo and Vanessa Vigil used the face scan feature in a copy of NBA2K they purchased, and agreed to the terms of service for the feature, but then sought monetary damages against Take-Two, claiming that the "actual harm" they suffered was the failure to follow every rule in BIPA itself. They claimed that the risk that their faces could be pilfered after they decided to play the online portions of the game with the characters they created using their face scans qualified as actual harm. The judge, after a motion to dismiss by Take-Two, was not buying it.

There is no allegation that Take-Two has disseminated or sold the plaintiffs' biometric data to third-parties, or that Take-Two has used the plaintiffs' biometric information in any way not contemplated by the only possible use of the MyPlayer feature: the creation of personalized basketball avatars for in-game play. The purported violations of BIPA are, at best, marginal, and the plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims for the alleged bare procedural violations of BIPA.
In other words: nice try on the money-grab, but we're not buying it. The idea behind BIPA is not to allow the public to syphon away money from companies that have been completely upfront about the use of biometric data, or face scans. Had the court allowed the potential for injury to serve as a valid reason for a lawsuit, the use of biometric data by companies and consenting members of the public would result in all kinds of lawsuits. And that technology has far more useful applications than video game face scans.

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