Ever try to trademark the word, “Jesus?” Me neither. But this company did.
Inspired by his time leading a singles ministry in Virginia Beach, Va., Michael Julius Anton came up with an idea for a clothing line that he thought was catchy and unique—”Jesus Surfed.”
He was on good ground with “Surfed.” But when he went to register the trademark, he found someone had beaten him to Jesus.
In a branding coup of biblical proportions, an Italian jeans maker persuaded the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2007 to register the word “Jesus” as a trademark, giving the company exclusive rights in America to sell clothing bearing the name of Christianity’s central figure.
Since then, the owner of the trademark, Jesus Jeans, has clamped down on Jesus-themed apparel, pitting its litigators against more than a dozen other startup clothing lines it claims appropriated “Jesus” without the company’s blessing. The company doesn’t have a trademark on images of Jesus, just the word.
This could be interesting. So far, the patent applies to clothing.
Attorneys for Jesus Jeans say they are just trying to protect the value of their brand—no different from Nike‘s claim over the winged goddess of victory.
“If somebody—small church or even a big church—wants to use ‘Jesus’ for printing a few T-shirts, we don’t care,” said Domenico Sindico, the general counsel for intellectual property at BasicNet SpA, BAN.MI -3.25% a publicly traded company based in Turin, Italy, that owns Jesus Jeans and the Kappa sportswear brand.
But when companies like Mr. Anton’s seek to commercialize their products, “that’s a concern,” he said.
I wonder how long it’ll take before the law applies to other markets such as book titles and general uses of the word. Imagine, someday the word “Jesus” could be followed by “TM” in new versions of the Bible. Bah, I’m just conjecturing.
Intellectual property lawyers say there is nothing in U.S. law that would prevent a company from claiming exclusive ownership of centuries-old names.
Some are dubious about the likelihood of consumer confusion between companies like Jesus Surfed and Jesus Jeans, a brand little-known to Americans.
But even if a company doesn’t want to back down, “it may not be worth the money to fight,” said Marc Reiner, an intellectual-property lawyer in New York.
This could be interesting.
Said Mr. Lamont: “How anyone can claim the name Jesus for themselves and put a trademark on it is beyond me.”
