The news that everyone knew was coming finally came at 9 a.m. on Monday morning, with the Washington football team releasing a statement that said they would be retiring their current team name as soon as they found a replacement. This announcement came on July 13th, just 10 days after the team announced that they’d conduct a formal review of the team name.
Seems pretty quick, no?
Well, according to a trademark lawyer who discussed the situation with NBC Sports Washington, it’s extremely abnormal that the decision-makers reached a decision this quickly.
“I can’t think of another instance where a major sports team or large corporation has done that,” said Scott Zebrak, a founding partner of leading Washington, D.C. copyright and trademark boutique law firm Oppenheim + Zebrak. “Typically, when you look at selecting a trademark and a brand, you ideally are not doing that in rushed circumstances. You are balancing a lot of things. At the corporate level, you’re picking a name that is going to be a commercially-successful brand for you. That alone you don’t want to rush. Typically, for a major corporation or major sports teams, you’re going to have an outside firm or a whole group of people involved in that. So doing it in 10 days is pretty unusual.”
Of course, a new name has not been announced yet, and there is no word that they have even decided on the next logo that will be implemented in Washington. Whether or not they have a leader in the clubhouse is unknown, though there has been a lot of speculation from the fans’ side of things.
Regardless of what ends up being the name, it’s apparent that Washington is moving at lightning speed with all of this, and working to wade through all of the minutia and trademark laws that come with this sort of massive change. Hopefully nothing will trip them up along the way.
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