‘The Perfect Season’ Trademark: IU Would Have To License The Phrase From The Patriots

It’s been nearly a decade since Mike wrote about the strange trademark approval the New England Patriots received on the term “Perfect Season.” The story rang as odd for several reasons, not the least of which being that the team applied for the mark in 2008 just before that year’s Super Bowl and at a time in which the Patriots had completed an 18-0 record including the regular season and two playoff games. The Patriots then famously fell on their collective face against the Giants, making the season very much not perfect. But the team went ahead and got the mark anyway. Add to that my take that this kind of phrase for the categories of sports apparel and the like is not nearly unique enough to serve as a valid mark to begin with and we have a situation practically begging to get absurd.

And the absurdity may have arrived. For you non-sports fans in the audience, the Indiana University Hoosiers just won the College Football National Championship without losing a single game during the season. IU, in stark contrast to the Patriots, did in fact have a perfect season. But if they, or anyone else, would like to celebrate that fact, they would need to license the use of the term from the Patriots to do so.

Not only did The Kraft Group continue, they licensed the mark to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association for use in a DVD in order to satisfy the “use in commerce” stipulation by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and, in 2016, the team was granted rights to the trademarks.

Unlike Pat Riley, who filed to trademark “Three Peat” when he was the coach of the Lakers and then cashed in when the Chicago Bulls and New York Yankees won three straight titles, The Kraft Group’s trademark hasn’t had many opportunities to gain royalties from the mark.

But Kraft can demonstrate it has used the term in commerce via its previous licensing agreements. That puts IU and/or apparel companies in the position to go one of three routes. They can license the term for apparel from Kraft, thereby perpetuating this entire silly enterprise, they can not license the phrase and potentially fight a court battle to invalidate the trademark after they make the products and are sued or threatened by Kraft, or they can just not use the phrase at all.

The latter appears to be the most likely route.

Items in Indiana’s team store use the word “Perfection.” Homefield Apparel, whose original school is Indiana, uses “Perfect” without “Season” on its shirts.

Even that is absurd. Again, the end result, thanks to a USPTO all too happy to approve trademarks that it probably shouldn’t, is that a team that achieved a perfect season cannot freely use the phrase that correctly describes its own accomplishment because it would have to license it from a team that didn’t.