What’s a Name Worth?

Go to Amazon.com today and you can buy an official Nike “US Soccer” jersey on sale for $78.99. For a mere $35.00, the clothing manufacturer Xara sells a “USA Soccer” jersey that is not Cheap NFL Jerseys licensed by US Soccer but is instead, in their own words, “A Unique Soccer Experience Representing a Country.” Apparently that “US Soccer” trademark is worth about $45.00 per shirt to Nike and the US Soccer.

Total sales of officially licensed merchandise totaled $12.6 billion in 2010 in just MLB, NFL, and college sports alone, so apparel sales are clearly big business in spectator sports. It is in this backdrop that the peculiar case of the Washington Redskins vs. the Federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board is of interest to economists.

Over the past two or three decades, under pressure from Native American tribes and other petitioners, dozens of colleges and high schools have changed their mascots from representations of Native Wholesale NFL Jerseys Americans. While Miami University (Ohio) and Southern Nazarene University both dropped the name “Redskins” in the late 1990s, the NFL’s Redskins have resisted the calls to change their mascot. This may be changing.

The Federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which adjudicates questions regarding trademarks, recently heard a case requesting that the board classify the word “Redskin” as a derogatory Baltimore Ravens Jerseys Cheap slur. If the board deems the term offensive, the team would no longer be subject to trademark protection essentially meaning that anyone could sell merchandise in the team’s colors and with the words Cheap Atlanta Falcons Jerseys“Washington Redskins”.