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Formula 1, Others Oppose Arena Football One’s Logo Trademark Application
from the f-off dept
There is an incredible dearth of nuance when it comes to how some companies attempt to enforce their trademarks. A couple of things are true. First, an entity risks losing their marks if they don’t rigorously enforce them against actual infringement. Second, the USPTO is far too lenient in granting marks that are non-creative or which contain very basic characters, like individual letters and numbers. And, third, the results of this are company lawyers suing or opposing trademark applications in a manner that ultimately looks very, very silly.
Arena Football One is a league that has existed for about a year. The small league kicked off its inaugural season in 2024, shortly after filing for trademarks on its names and logo, the latter of which is “AF1”, with the “A” styled to have a football in the center of it. And then Formula 1 came calling.
On Oct. 3, Formula 1, which is a popular international auto racing league, filed a “Notice of Opposition” before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board against Arena Football One. F1’s grounds for appeal against AF1 include, “likelihood of confusion,” and “likelihood of dilution.”
“The [AF1] Services are entertainment services related to sports, which are highly related to the entertainment services offered by the Formula 1 Companies under the F1 Marks and covered by the F1 Registrations… The Applicant’s Mark encompasses in its entirety the Opposer’s F1 word mark and the ‘F1’ element is identical in sight, sound and commercial impression, and is highly similar to the F1 Marks overall. Both marks are pronounced similarly: ‘A-F-One” and ‘F-One.’ They share the dominant, final sound element “F-One.” The initial “A” in “AF1” is likely to be perceived as a minor variation or prefix, making the marks phonetically very close.” Attorneys for F1 stated in the appeal.
Likelihood of confusion is simply not on offer here. This is where the nuance of trademark law comes into play. It’s not enough for marks to be similar to allege confusion. They also have to, upon examination, exhibit a likelihood of confusion among the hurried morons of the world. I’m simply going to put F1’s and AF1’s logos side by side below for you and let you decide for yourself just how confusing they are.
I’m sorry, but no. The logos aren’t that similar, they use different color combinations, there’s a football in the AF1 logo, as well as the league’s goddamned name. Unless we’re arguing now that morons in a hurry can’t even read basic English words, then there is no confusion to be had here. And I myself am a “moron” when it comes to both F1 racing and arena football in the sense that I don’t know or care about either of them. If someone came up to me and asked if I wanted AF1 tickets, I would ask them what the hell they were talking about, not what time the race is. All the more-so if they called it “Arena Football One,” a name that F1 also opposed.
I suppose what they’re going for here on the dilution claim is dilution by blurring, meaning that F1’s famous mark will be weakened in strength of association with its product due to the similarities with AF1’s. I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit on that one, too. F1 has a handful of races in the United States, sure, but Arena Football One is a relatively small and obscure sports league. I would love to see a shred of evidence for true dilution due to its name and logo by F1. I have to believe the effects of AF1 existing on F1 are essentially non-existent. And, keep in mind, dilution is typically more challenging to prove, as you have to show it actually occurring.
Both Nike and Abercrombie & Fitch have also filed for extensions to oppose the marks. Those seem to make even less sense than the F1 opposition. I have no idea what Nike could be citing in opposition, but is Abercrombie & Fitch really going to suggest that it’s products are going to be confused with an arena football game?
So much of this sort of thing feels like attorneys filing oppositions for the sake of oppositions. And none of it appears designed to actually protect the consumer, which is supposed to be the point of trademark law.
Filed Under: f1, likelihood of confusion, one, trademark
Companies: af1, arena football one, formula 1
Comments on “Formula 1, Others Oppose Arena Football One’s Logo Trademark Application”
You can't use F1
The logos look different, but they can’t use F1 in any iteration. Thank you, try again.
Re: time for a new keyboard
That is a shame. My keyboard has long had an [F1] key. Indeed, even before I got these keyboards, there were [F1] keys on what I did have.
Someone better tell IBM to stop using that mark on the key caps.
Re: Re:
Damn, that was my first thought too. My Lenovo has one too. Now I’m really confused. Are they advertising a new keyboard, a loud car race, or grown men playing a high school gym class game?
Re: Re: Re:
Damn, you guys beat me to it. I was going to remark about this too.
I only see the F1 in the typescript of the Arena Football One logo
As a regular F1 viewer, I’d find this logo confusing as the stylized A disappears for me, leaving F1 in a format I’m not familiar with.
Re:
I’ve been watching F1 for decades. I’d be confused, too, for aroundabout the time it’d take a few synapses to fire and dots to connect. I wouldn’t in a million years conflate the two, nor would I assume two very different-looking logos were the same brand, because why the shit would anyone ever deliberately muddle their own branding?
I can easily see someone tiredly scrolling some news after work on a Friday evening, seeing a “blue F1 logo” (or the obverse) and doing a double-take, but I can’t see how anyone actually familiar with either brand would not come to the correct conclusion within half a second of active consideration.
I get less and less keen on the damn sport with every passing year since Liberty took over and started doing exactly what I knew they would do, and are doing.
That's not a football?
That’s a rugby ball…. Oh American football. Is how my mind went as I scrolled down to the logos.
They need help. Have they tried pressing their namesake key?
Title is confusing
The ArEan football? I thought this was some kind of football specific to blond-haired, blue-eyed übermenschen…
Re:
Holy shit, what a typo. I will fix that immediately.
Re: Re:
Holy old fuck, what a completely unexpected-ass laugh I just had, thanks to you both.
The typo was quite hilarious on its own, and then I spotted you were corrected by Narcissus of all mythological folk. The internet doth be magical, methinks.
So F1 hates that “AF1” contains “F1”, Aberwhatsis hates that “AF1” contains “AF”, and any day now I expect the steak sauce guys to oppose the mark because it contains “A1”.
Makes sense.
I would hate go to a stadium, sitting around a grass pitch, watching the cheerleaders, then start being confused after twenty minutes of people throwing a ball without seeing any race car.
F1 must ensure no one could ever get this kind of confusion, nor “dilution”, and risk to waste twenty minutes of their life.
Nike would be interested because of Air Force Ones (AF1s).
BTW in 2018 the F1 was challenged by 3M, as it’s basically identical to its Futuro logo.