Quote:
Originally posted by saetex
ATM has had that trademarked since the 1920's and it has been a very successful marketing strategy for them. Every school that wishes to use it has to get permission. I go to UT and I even know this. I hate ATM and I feel that they are completely right in this manner. I do not know of another school that promotes the 12th Man slogan or campaign other than ATM. It is also a multi multi million dollar ATM foundation.
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Remember that trademarks have to retain source identification to avoid becoming a generic term - if it does become generic, the mark can be rendered invalid.
I'm not saying this has happened, but if so many other teams refer to their fans as the '12th man' there exists the distinct possibility. The portion about the foundation would not apply, IIRC, since there is really no incidence of confusion by sharing the mark.
-RC
--I'm also not a lawyer, so those with the JD may want to correct my generalizations.