No more A's & Cardinals in the Cape league??

I see it from both sides, MLB has a right to protect it's franchise and the teams hve a right to support their local merchants.

Names don't matter, mine played for the Falmouth Commodores and he did just fine.

There's no professional team that is the Bulldogs, right? Otherwise, high school might be in trouble. Oh shoot, school to the west of us are the Pirates.. guess they have to get rid of their purple and gold and adopt the Pittsburgh Pirates uniforms...

How is this any different that any other league, team, school, etc that uses the "Cardinals" or whatever???

Bulldog,
MLB doesn't want ANY team using their team names on jerseys unless they are purchased from those licensed by MLB.

The US is a big place to find every team using names on shirts and jerseys not officially licensed, but pretty obvious at the cape.

My brother told me today that he was at a clients home today and their LL uniforms were purchased from licensed suppliers.

He mentioned it because one team was the Muckdogs and the other the Cardinals.

Well I'd like to know who gave them that right to those team names?

Their logos should be copyrighted, but not the name. Anybody should be able to name their team WHATEVER they want as far as I'm concerned.

I don't see why MLB gets to be different than anything else...

The Wareham Whatevers. I can picture it now.

Warham does not use an MLB team name, not all teams do.
I didn't originally agree on this but Mr TPM had a point, if you had a team named the Microsoft Mashers, they would be all over them the next day. I don't think MLB really cared (or they would have done something about it from the get go years ago), but their licensed suppliers where getting all over them to do something about it.

I have read that there is a Nov. 1 deadline for teams to decide. So far, the Chatham Athletics have become the Anglers, still to be known as the A's. The Bourne Braves will remain the Braves. Haven't seen reports on the others yet.

I would think that if you use the teams' trademarks, you would face trouble if you didn't buy from a licensee. But I have to agree, MLB does not have a monopoly on certain names. Maybe certain names unique to MLB (e.g., Mets), but Pirates? Cardinals? What next, the NFL tries to stop every HS football team out there from calling itself the Eagles, the Bears or the Lions? I doubt it would work.

The real tragedy is, just because you CAN do this, doesn't mean you SHOULD. I don't see where it would hurt MLB to allow name use under written agreements charging either nothing or a nominal fee.

But if the teams get their own, unique names, it's probably best anyway, as it will allow them to sell their own branded merchandise as a fund raiser. It's worked for MiLB teams and I don't see why it wouldn't work on a smaller scale at the Cape.

I guess we'll know who all has changed names by this time next week.

quote:

The Wareham Whatevers

It's Wareham Gatemen! Gateway to the Cape.

It's not the names that are at issue, it's use of logo's and colors...trademark infrigement. You could be the Cardinals if your uniforms and logo were distinctively different than the MLB franchise.

Even Fay Vincent thought that enforcing trademark rights to the cape was overwhelmingly stupid by MLB. The value cape teams are giving MLB in positive exposure is far more than MLB can recieve in licensing rights. Very shortsighted, but hey, owners fought to keep the reserve clause too. Their tombstones are not going to read "He was just too smart for his own good".

quote:

It's not the names that are at issue, it's use of logo's and colors

So why did the Chatem A's have to change? Was the movie "Summer Catch" I think, was it wrong? Because weren't the A's in that movie blue and white? Last I saw, the Oakland Athletics were green and yellow..