Having gone to college and law school at two of Texas A&M's rivals, I've never been a huge fan of the football program there. However, one has to give credit to the spirit of Aggie fans and to the spirit of "the 12th Man." As you may know, Aggie fans are each individually considered the 12th Man and so they stand for the entire game. Annoying for those of us who like to sit, but true. Aggies are so fond of their tradition that they trademarked "The 12th Man" in 1990. They've also defended their mark, sending nice letters to other sports teams who have tried to copy the rallying cry of the 12th Man. However, it seems that the Seattle Seahawks don't check their mailboxes very regularly and have been dodging calls from Texas A&M telling them to stop with their 12th Man slogans.
The Seahawks have used this same concept since the 1980s, and have even retired the #12 jersey. The team now sells #12 flags and #12 jerseys, but insist that if these memorabilia have something to do with the 12th man, then the fans must be reading that into these items themselves. The team can't stop the fans from doing whatever fans do. Lance Lopez, a corporate honcho at the Seahawks explains:
"I will say this. Our fans have been the folks that have run with the 12th man. It has not been the organization itself. We raise a flag with a 12 on it, it doesn't say 12th man or anything like that. We retired the jersey No. 12 many, many years ago and we've always sort of kept it under that context. But, in terms of this whole 12th man derivative, if you will, that's occurred in the mass media and the public here locally. It has not been generated by the organization, per se."
Mike Hasselbeck says the thought of the Aggies telling them to stop is "silly." Maybe, but so is saying "per se."
Update: Tom Kirkendall has an Aggie joke on this topic here.
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1. Posted by Irony on February 2, 2006 @ 7:33 | Permalink
This is fabulous. I love the idea of a Microsoft-jillionaire going head to head with an IP troll (and TAMU clearly is a troll in this context) on subject matter Joe Sixpack can relate to. It might actually get us somewhere with patent reform, if Crackberries going dark across the nation doesn't.
2. Posted by David on February 2, 2006 @ 11:13 | Permalink
The Seahawks' defense seems so odd to me. I've lived in Seattle for the last 8 years, and I'm rather confident that the Aggies don't have much in the way of Washington State trademark rights.
Looking to the federal registrations, Texas has only a couple of marks that claim to predate the Seahawks' use, for general entertainment services and college scholarship. The other things, such as towels come after the Seahawks began continuously using the 12th man.
Seems to me that this centers the debate over using the 12th man thing to sell tickets, so we're concerned about posting it at the game. The Seahawks, assuming that they've been selling flags and jerseys the whole time, are already in the clear on those.
Personally, and I'm not much of a sports fan, 12th man sounds really descriptive. Again, being a Seattlite, I didn't know of any secondary meaning until this hit the news.
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