Branding the Athlete… The Good Old Boy Bubba Watson Inks Deal with Steve & Barry’s® for Collection of High-Quality, Low-Priced Golf and Casual Apparel
A celebrity post by David Dawsey, the I.P. Golf Guy and author of the Golf-Patents Blog.
A properly branded athlete can often generate more revenues from endorsement deals then they can generate from actually playing the sport that made them famous. The key words in the previous sentence being “properly branded.” So who is responsible for making sure an athlete is properly branded? The athlete, the agent, the business manager, the accountant, the attorney, … There isn’t one correct answer for all athletes. After all, the athlete has to be talented, charming, and personable to begin with, but someone else has to be responsible for ensuring long-term business success.
There is no doubt that professional golfer Bubba Watson has done his part in creating a unique persona. The persona includes a good old boy golfer named Bubba that hits the ball a mile with a pink-shafted driver.
Bubba has teamed up with 200+ store national chain Steve & Barry’s® to introduce a BubbaGolf™ collection of high-quality, low-priced golf and casual apparel. The collection will include golf pants and shorts, polo shirts, hats, visors, and windjackets; all of which will be priced at $14.98 or less.
Now, since this is a blog dedicated to legal aspects of celebrity branding… let’s take a look at what has been done to protect the trademark.
A trademark application has been filed for the BUBBAGOLF mark in two international classes; namely, international class 018 for “all-purpose sport bags, backpacks, handbags, duffel bags, shoulder bags, and wallets not of precious metal,” and international class 025 for “beachwear, belts made of leather, belts made of textile, coats, footwear excluding orthopedic footwear, jackets, jeans, headwear, sweaters, sweatshirts, pants, shorts, shirts, windshirts, tracksuits, and undergarments.”
Interestingly, the application lists the owner of the mark as 4004 Incorporated. Surely, that must be a company owned by Bubba, right? Wrong, 4004 Incorporated is the parent company of Steve & Barry’s. This peaked my interest, so I decided to check out Bubba’s website. The website is nice, but oddly includes a copyright notice listing Steve & Barry’s. Odd, right? Well, it only gets more interesting. The URL was registered in the name of a person with a Steve & Barry’s email address. I hope someone is advising Bubba on these issues and these seemly odd occurrences are part of a larger strategic master plan, but I doubt it. Shouldn’t a celebrity athlete own the trademarks and domain names containing their name?
Who do you think owns Tiger’s trademarks and URLs… a company owned by Tiger or Nike?
Posted by Aimee Kaplan at 11/7/2007 12:00 AM 
Categories: Fashion Accessories, Athletes, W (Name), Apparel, B (Name)
Categories: Fashion Accessories, Athletes, W (Name), Apparel, B (Name)
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