From jeans to baseball teams, the AFL has an interesting history of battling for trademarks — but the fight for the Devils might be the most intriguing of all, writes Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson.
The new Hobart Stadium will be the key to the new team's entry, a 23,000 seat venue with a fixed roof at Macquarie Point."The Devils seem to make sense to me. And I know there's been debate around the legality, and copyright issues, they broadly can be worked through," AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said.Behind the scenes the AFL has been locked in a more than three-year battle for the name "Tasmania Devils", going back to 2019.
Daniel Kiley, a partner at HWL Ebsworth Lawyers in Adelaide and the former chair of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand South Australian committee, says that a trademark isn't complete protection either."A trademark applicant needs to nominate the goods and services to be covered by their application, with those products categorised into standardised classes.
The ABC's trademark registrations give it the exclusive right to use those marks in relation to the goods and services covered by the registrations, and to prevent other traders from using any substantially identical or deceptively similar marks in relation to those kinds of products. It turns out you can buy Taz on almost anything. That includes a lot of the things the AFL wants to sell withThe AFL first filed the trademark applications for the names "Tasmania Devils", "Tassie Devils" and a "Tasmania Devils" logo in May 2019.
That response proved unsuccessful, with IP Australia responding to the AFL in March to maintain its provisional refusal of the application. The club is believed to be the one formed to compete in the VFL and underage competition, and are registered to North Hobart Oval. But a careful scan of Freo merchandise from before 2010 will show something missing. From 1997 to 2010, under the wharfie clutching an anchor, it said "Fremantle Football Club".After the initial honeymoon period of the Fremantle Dockers, it turned out that the manufacturer of Dockers jeans, Levi Strauss, beat the club to trademark registration.
The low stakes and amicable resolution involved visual brand separation and the small payment of royalties in exchange for being allowed to officially use the Dockers name once more.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
New beer adds more spice to AFL’s ugly booing controversyA Queensland brewery has added fuel to the Jason Horne-Francis booing controversy by launching a beer featuring the Port Adelaide young gun. 7NEWS
Read more »
PM must realise futility of trying to bribe voters with a stadiumIt's a stretch to believe that all of Labor's spending in Tasmania can be objectively justified and not a single red cent was committed purely to influence votes, writes Nick Cater.
Read more »
AFL round eight live updates: Richmond v West Coast, Geelong v Adelaide, Gold Coast v MelbourneFollow on along for all the live coverage of Saturday’s mega day of footy, starting with Richmond and West Coast at the MCG.
Read more »
'No place for this behaviour': AFL fans face lifetime bans for vilificationNine men have already been issued the penalty in 2023 and a further five incidents are under investigation.
Read more »
Woman hospitalised after falling from second tier at Marvel StadiumA woman has been hospitalised after a fall at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium before an AFL match between Carlton and Brisbane. 7NEWS
Read more »