On August 15, 2019, LeBron James (through his company LBJ Trademarks, LLC) filed US trademark application number 88579771 (TSDR). The application is an ITU application, meaning that the applicant has professed, under penalty of perjury, to have a good-faith intention to use the mark “Taco Tuesday” for goods and services in four classes.
Until today, apparently, when James’s spokesperson said this in a New York Times article:
“The filing was to protect the company from potential lawsuits should we decide to pursue any ideas, nothing of which is in development,” a spokesman for Mr. James said this week on (taco) Tuesday. “It has nothing to do with stopping others from using the term.”
I wonder if anyone will file a protest at the USPTO, citing the New York Times article as evidence of the applicant’s apparent repudiation of any intention to use the mark as a trademark.
Mr. James’s trademark law firm’s offices are in the New York Times building. Go figure.
Oh and would you look at that? Normally it takes three months for a newly filed US trademark application to reach the desk of an Examining Attorney. But oddly, more than two months early compared with the usual workflow, this case has already gotten assigned to an Examining Attorney. And on the exact same day as this article in the New York Times! Coincidence I’m sure.
Carl,
I enjoyed your blog posts on LBJ and TACO TUESDAY. You don’t link them with Twitter, I guess?
I join the chorus that sings “Trademark and Copyright are different!”
Lucy