The Washington Commanders may have flopped in the way their name was exposed to the masses just a day before the announcement, but they actually knew what it would be back in August last year.
D.C. trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who is also the founder of Gerben Intellectual Property, took to Twitter on Monday and noted that the team filed its trademark application for the Commanders in Trinidad and Tobago on Aug. 6, 2021. There was a good reason for them to do that.
Gerben talked about how trademarking can be a tricky process in a previous interview with 7News Sports Anchor Scott Abraham:
“When a trademark application is filed in the United States it becomes a public record within five days. I could find it on the U.S. PTO website if they had filed it here in the United States,” he told Abraham. “So if you are trying to keep a new name a secret, you would not want to file it here.”
Gerben said back in January that companies, like Apple, file trademarks in small islands where the trademarks aren’t tracked online so that the names can remain a secret.
There is a treaty called the Paris Convention, adopted in 1883.
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Washington filed the initial trademark in Trinidad and Tobago and then transferred the trademark to the U.S. on Feb. 2, 2022. It takes five days for trademark applications to become public record.
“Any squatter that was trying to file trademark applications in the United States (over the past 6 months), would now be in line behind the Commanders at the United States Patent and Trademark Office,” Gerben tweeted.
