Waiting to see what they do with them will lead to vacating the copyright based on the 'prior art' claim, if I understand these things correctly. You need to find a lawyer who knows this stuff who is also a member of the supporters groups and willing to do it pro bono because we all know the SGs don't have money to speak of.
Maybe MLS is protecting these terms from other entities...but it seems suspicious coming right after the Subaru fiasco.
Well, it will be interesting to see what happens. We should have ponied up for the national trademark and avoided this. I've got a big case of the fudge-its right now. Whatever. In the immediate future, they have devalued the brand of the RMC by taking the rights. They should have negotiated with the SG's. However, SG's are always in flux and you never know if sanity will rule the day. At least there will be "professionals" at MLS/RSL who are paid to oversee it instead of overworked fans doing it on top of all the other stuff they have going on. Really, us SG's are totally dependent on the work of a few great people in the FO's to pull the whole thing off. As long as they approach it cooperatively, I'm cool. But I think that we are mainly to blame, not MLS and not RSL. If you're all pissed about it, then stop bitching and fix it. Send a message to Bill Manning and let him know what you think.
http://www.prostamerika.com/?p=76216 Different but related... this is what the COL and RSL fans should be doing...
I agree. I'm not part of C10, nor do I know what it stands for, but others have said they are pursuing the matter. I also don't think the MLS should take over the rivalries cups like they did the Supporters Shield. They were created by the hard work and money of the supporters groups, and therefore should stay under the care of the supporters groups.
How much more is the league doing in stepping in? I'm really just asking because it doesn't feel like they've done anything other than trademark the names. Is there more to it that I'm missing?
And I understand that But if all they end up doing is trademarking the cup names, is that really that bad of a thing?
The problem is that if the trademark goes uncontested because C10 waits to see if that's all they do, then they do something else, C10 will have lost its opportunity to do anything about it.
Yeah, how great would it be if MLS gets the trademark and then down the road requires some kind of licensing fee for supporters to make scarves or t-shirts. Like Jason said, it's not having the trademark that is scary. It's what they do with it down the road and since we have no idea, it's better to just not let them have it at all.
Or they could sell the rights to someone, a la the BCS bowls. Instead of the RMC or Subaru RMC, suddenly you could have the Amway RMC, or Kroger RMC. Is that something we really want to leave up to the MLS to decide?
Feel free to continue discussing it all you want, but yes, we are discussing it amongst ourselves and taking some proactive steps to figure this situation out.