you know, i was wondering the same thing when i saw that in their spring catalog. its been out for 4-5 mo's and i havent heard anything yet.
my guess is that nike has rights to "steve prefontaine" and his image. plenty of other dudes have the last name prefontaine........patagonia can say they named this jacket after carlos prefontaine, their janitor. or something like that.
Plus, patagonia is ten times better than nike.
yeah, the thing that struck me is that they don't mention steve prefontaine and it's not an athletic jacket at all. if anything, it's SORT OF like an old school track jacket. sort of. and they can say they named it after the prefontaine who lit the torch at the 76 olympics :)
looking at their catalog, where they like to talk about how they are for protecting the environment, using organic materials and solar and wind power, i found it odd that they don't talk about sweatshops or anything about WHO makes their clothing. you know anything about this?
if that were the case, there would be no case at all if it ever was a case incase you didn't know.
le major wrote:
you know, i was wondering the same thing when i saw that in their spring catalog. its been out for 4-5 mo's and i havent heard anything yet.
my guess is that nike has rights to "steve prefontaine" and his image. plenty of other dudes have the last name prefontaine........patagonia can say they named this jacket after carlos prefontaine, their janitor. or something like that.
Nike doesn't own the rights to "Pre" "Prefontaine" nor "Steve Prefontaine" Patagonia, and you, are well within their rights to market the dead drunk guy too.
Yeah, but somehow Microsoft invented 'Windows".
MarathonMind wrote:
Yeah, but somehow Microsoft invented 'Windows".
They did apply for trademark. Nike hasn't.
Unprecedented to be able to trademark a single standard word. I still don't know how they allowed it.
MarathonMind wrote:
Unprecedented to be able to trademark a single standard word. I still don't know how they allowed it.
WTF? Single words are trademarked all the time. Craw back under your rock.
crawl
They probably were able to provisionally trademark it, but it isn't official until there is secondary meaning to the public. In other words, most people hear "windows" and immediately associate it with microsoft windows.
Can you really trademark a name?? What if one of the designers of the jacket happened to have the last name of Prefontaine??
BIG e wrote:
Can you really trademark a name?? What if one of the designers of the jacket happened to have the last name of Prefontaine??
Of course you can trademark a name. Nike didn't.
Nike's trademark is "NIKE" -- get it?
I think a very simple explanation is that the Prefontaine family issued Nike, and apparently Patagonia, a license to use the Prefontaine name, image or likeness. Because two companies are using the Prefontaine name, I am assuming the Nike license was not exclusive.
This would be no different than Michael Jordan lending his name and image to McDonalds, Hanes and Nike simultaneously. Happens all the time.
So, presuming Nike has a non-exclusive right to the Prefontaine name, it would have no basis to sue Patagonia.
Ralph Lauren, Vidal Sassoon, Gloria Vanderbilt. Yes you can trademark a name.
good times wrote:
I think a very simple explanation is that the Prefontaine family issued Nike, and apparently Patagonia, a license to use the Prefontaine name, image or likeness. Because two companies are using the Prefontaine name, I am assuming the Nike license was not exclusive..
It's more than very likely that the "Prefontaine family" has no rights to anything.
Trademark rights differ from copyrights. Trademarks rights are a formal process which require filing and continual enforcement once accepted. Copyright is an implied right.
Stephan Prefontaine wrote:
Ralph Lauren, Vidal Sassoon, Gloria Vanderbilt. Yes you can trademark a name.
Somehow I don't think that the brandname "Ralph Lipshitz" wasn't going to go over very well in the marketplace.