Over the weekend, LeBron James’ love of Taco Tuesday became the subject of confusion, intrigue and mockery, after a company owned by The King decided it was time to attempt to trademark the ubiquitous phrase “Taco Tuesday” in order to own the use it in social media posts and as the name of a potential podcast.
But being that the phrase is so widely used and that a restaurant company trademarked the phrase in 1989, a trademark attorney doesn’t believe LeBron has a good chance of actually owning the trademark for “Taco Tuesday” even if he’s not doing it as a restaurant.
Alexandra Canal of Yahoo Finance spoke with trademark lawyer David Leichtman, who said that the wide use of the phrase as well as the fact that basically all businesses in 2019 are on social media makes it very difficult for James to own. He also said that the business who trademarked it in 1989, the taco chain Taco John’s, likely can’t win a suit against him if he decides to use the name for the intended purposes listed on the trademark application.
“Taco Tuesday is a ubiquitous term — when you have multiple outlets all trying to use the same mark in a very crowded field, it’s very difficult to get the Trademark Office to give you that protection and even if they [do] it’s going to be very thin protection,” he stated.
So, although James and his business associates wanted to legally protect themselves against copycats in the podcast and social media space, it doesn’t look like they can own anything in that space. But luckily for them, the other business who has the trademark can’t really do anything to them either. Because truthfully, nobody really owns Taco Tuesday.
.jpg?w=600)
