Ask a Jewish Lawyer^®

Branding and business strategy from a trademark attorney and founder.

Client Spotlight: Argentina’s Football Trademarks for the World Cup

Lionel Messi in his trademark Albiceleste colors. Our client, the Argentine Football Association, is known as “Albiceleste” in the soccer world. Photo courtesy of Messi.com.

The 2026 World Cup is being held across North America this year, co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, with most of the matches and the final taking place here in the U.S. The reigning champions, Argentina’s national team, hired us to make sure their brand was protected here before they arrived.

Last year JPG Legal registered two U.S. trademarks for the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino (AFA), which English speakers know as the Argentine Football Association. They also know it as the team of Lionel Messi, the best soccer player of his generation.  Despite being 38 (the same age as me), he’s on the roster again for this year’s World Cup. 

Read the rest of this post »

Stop Sending AI Workslop to Your Lawyer

It’s hard to tell, but I think OpenAI and its competitors have mostly had a positive effect on my business. While my organic search traffic has plummeted, a lot of new clients tell me ChatGPT referred them to me. And around 15% of my clients for the past couple of years have been generative AI startups. 

So I should have no real complaints as somebody selling shovels to prospectors during a gold rush, or, less charitably, selling oxygen to people who are inflating another tech bubble. 

But I do have one big complaint: I’m drowning in workslop. It has to stop. 

This Kind of Slop Is Called Workslop Now

Recently I saw a story in Morning Brew (one of my favorite newsletters) about a Harvard Business Review article that used the term “workslop” to describe the kind of AI-generated garbage that people are sending their colleagues.

Because large language models (LLMs) are still extremely bad at performing most types of white collar work, workslop is mostly unusable and has to be edited extensively or even replaced by the person who received it. 

Bad Brand Names

Today I’m going to criticize a few bad brand names that exemplify mistakes I see many business owners make when naming their brands. This is not a post about the worst brand names. Nor is it about brand names that are so bad they draw attention to themselves. 

I’m simply going to talk about some very normal bad brand names that most people might not even realize are bad. I want this post to be helpful to business owners who are trying to figure out what to call themselves.

Most entrepreneurs know to avoid vulgar, offensive, or gross sounding words unless their industry calls for it, like my dog-waste-management client, Poody Doo. A lot fewer business owners know the other rules for coming up with a good brand name. I’ve written about this topic at length, but the examples of bad names in this blog post will put my rules into practice. 

To be clear, if it’s not already obvious, I’m not saying companies with bad brand names, including the ones below, can’t be successful. But any success they are lucky enough to achieve will cost more and be harder gained because of all the expenses that come with choosing a bad brand name. 

The 2025 USPTO Trademark Fee Increase: When Is It Happening?

Updated November 15 2024.

The USPTO is planning to increase most trademark filing fees in Fiscal Year 2025 (which has already started). While this newsletter’s headline might seem like a clickbait-y rhetorical question, and it partially is, I also really want to know when exactly the USPTO will raise its filing fees.

November 15 2024 update: According to a new USPTO notice, the changes are scheduled to take effect on January 18, 2025.

The most important changes to note are a $100-per-class increase for new trademark applications, a $75-per-class increase for 5-6 year (Section 8) maintenance filings, and a combined $125-per-class increase for 10-year Section 8+9 renewals (as if renewals weren’t complicated enough). The rest of the changes can be found in this spreadsheet.

Fiscal Year 2025 started October 1, and we still haven’t been given an exact date for the fee increase by the USPTO. In the budget request they submitted to Congress, they gave a date of November 23, 2024, but they made it clear that this was solely for the purpose of “estimating fee collections” and that it “may change.” Given that we’re getting pretty close to November 23 and they still haven’t announced a final date, I don’t think that’s going to end up being when the fee increase takes effect.

It’s possible, perhaps probable, that they’ll raise their fees at the same time they retire the old TEAS filing system. A fundamental part of the new fee schedule is eliminating the TEAS fee structure altogether. They’ve already launched the new system, so it seems silly to convert the existing TEAS filing system to a fundamentally different fee structure just so people can use TEAS for another month or two until it gets taken offline.

Clothing Trademarks: Classes and Specimens for Apparel

Clothing trademarks might be the most commonly filed-for trademarks, as well as the most difficult to file correctly. This is mainly because of how complicated the rules are about trademark classes and specimens. In this post, I’ll go over common mistakes to avoid and strategies to use when filing a trademark application for apparel.

Usually if you’re filing for a clothing brand, you’re filing in class 25 (the apparel trademark class), but sometimes you might want to file in class 35 for retail store services. I’ll cover both options in this post.

Retail Store Services for Clothing (35) vs. Clothing Goods Themselves (25)

I file so many different types of trademark specimens that I wrote a guide about it. So it’s significant when I say that the retail-store-services vs. goods-themselves issue is one of the largest headache-causers for me and my associate attorneys. There are many businesses out there that could reach registration for both retail store services in class 35 and for clothing goods in class 25. There are many other businesses that should really only register in one or the other. Who should register for which classes?

Toy Trademarks: Dos and Don’ts for Toy Brand Protection

When I was five, I loved to play with Legos. Not because I liked to have finished models to show off, but because I had enough of an imagination back then to come up with adventures for the little Lego people, pitting them against each other and the elements.

When I was nine, the Lego Island computer game came out and it had pretty good reviews, making it a no-brainer for me to ask my parents to buy it. By then my imagination had waned, so I was excited to have an adventure with my Lego people again in a virtual environment.

Lego’s ability to traverse industries while keeping the same brand name was essential for capitalizing on the nostalgia of children like me while appealing to our maturing tastes. If you’re an aspiring toymaker and want to be able to offer appealing products across industries to your customers as they age, it’s essential that you choose a great brand name – a great toy trademark – at the very beginning of your journey.

If you choose a toy name that can’t scale with your success, or perhaps can’t be protected at all, the goodwill you’ve built up with your early customers will be wasted, resulting in a tremendous loss of potential earnings you could have raked in from the nostalgia people feel for their favorite childhood toys.

Can You Sell Patented Products on Amazon?

Note from Jeremy: This is a guest post from patent agent Brad Fach of PatentFile.org. We’ve been sending patent clients to them for several years now and everybody has been very happy with their service, so I thought our readers might appreciate some advice from Brad on an issue many of my clients deal with. We do not have any sort of affiliate or compensation arrangement with them.

Amazon is the world’s largest marketplace by revenue, providing businesses with unparalleled exposure to a global market. The platform’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for businesses to showcase and sell their products to a large number of consumers. But can you sell patented products on Amazon?

Trademarked Fruit Names: Sweet Sugar Mango’s Success

A few clients have asked me: Can you trademark a fruit? Not the name of the company selling the fruit, but the fruit itself? 

Yes, you can. One of my clients recently trademarked their fruit name, getting recognition for this feat from The New York Times earlier this year.

Goldenberry Farms’ “Sweet Sugar Mango” Trademark Grabs U.S. Spotlight in The New York Times

Mangoes, with their lush flavors and vibrant colors, have been a beloved fruit across many cultures. But mangoes come in many variations, and some stand out for their distinctive flavors. 

From the fertile grounds of Colombia emerges such a mango, with distinctive branding to match – known to the world as the “Sweet Sugar Mango” or “Sugar Mango,” courtesy of our client, Goldenberry Farms.