Apparently when it comes to inventing team spirit, Texas A&M owns the proverbial 12th Man. For those unfamiliar with American sport of football, each team in the competition fields 11 players: one team that plays as the offense and another as the defense. The 12th Man is historically seen as the moral support from the fans, whom are willing to step in and play if needed. At A&M this is enshrined in an actual football game more than 70 years ago, when E. King Gill, a student in the stands, suited up and stood on the sidelines ready to play at a moments notice.
Earlier this year, A&M filed suit against the Seattle Seahawks a week before the Super Bowl. Over the past 20 years, the Seahawks have used the term 12th Man in various forms and fashions (as have multiple other teams), including retiring the number 12 jersey and hoisting a number 12 flag at the top of the stadium. The administration for A&M contends that they own the term “12th Man” and that the Seahawks are otherwise infringing on this trademark.
It was announced today, that both sides have reached an agreement that included a monetary license of which the Seahawks would pay to use the term. Regardless as to whether trademark law is a valid or justifiable form of property, it is difficult to see in this instance, how the intangible State-protected entity somehow promoted the “progress of science and useful arts.” If anything, the moral of the story is why invent and create a legitimate business enterprise when you can sue instead?
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I started noticing in recent years that a lot of hockey fans from various NHL cities have taken to waving white towels of support for their team. This is a blatant ripoff of Roger Neilson’s famous white towel incident in the 1982 playoffs, when he raised a white towel of surrender after the team he coached–the Vancouver Canucks–received numerous bad calls in their underdog struggle against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Neilson, and three of his players who emulated the “surrender” with white towels of their own, were ejected that night. The very next game, thousands of Vancouver fans came to the game with white towels to wave and wave and wave. The team made the Stanley Cup finals that year (they were not expected to make it past Round 1), and since then Canuck fans have made a tradition out of white towel fan support.
Now that I have Aggie precedent to cite , I plan to sue every NHL franchise (as well as franchises from other sports whose fans have also adopted the white towel wave) for 82 billion dollars, to commemorate the legend that was Neilson and the Canuck run of ’82. When I win, I will steal away to some tropical tax haven and laugh out loud at the suckers still stuck in the world of state coercion.
I am parasite; hear me roar.
That 12th Man concept is also found here in Europe(atleast here in the Faroe Islands) in “soccer(proper footbal), I wonder if they will attempt to sue us, we have even got a fan club of our national “soccer” team that is called “tólvti maður” which is Faroese for 12th Man.
I wonder if they would sue them if they knew about their existence.
Trademarks are different from copyright and patents. The role of trademarks is not to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Rather, they exist to identify the source of commercial goods and services.
I fail to see how 12th Man is something being used to designate the origin of goods and services, though. I don’t think anyone is likely to confuse the Aggies and Seaahwks.
- Josh
If you’re missing the idea that this is a grand example of State favors for “preferred” institutions–you may be unaware of the evolutionary history of TAMU, from: fairly generic land-grant school, albeit with a proud history of a serious ROTC program, to a Major League EduGov research conglomerate. That, at TAMU, nothing is the same, save for the Iconography developed around its quaint history, mirrors the fact extant in our own FedGov, should be used as an additional proof of the axiom: “The regulated mirrors the Regulator.”
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