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  • Henry Park

Can you trademark THE?


In the believe it or not category.

The Ohio State University recently filed a trademark application for the word THE as a trademark for use on "Clothing, namely, t-shirts, baseball caps and hats" (see TSDR link for application serial number 88571984).

Yes. You got that correct. They filed for a trademark application for the most common word in the English language (see Wikipedia link).

I suspect the USPTO is not likely to register this trademark because it is a standard character mark. If they had filed a design mark (logo) for the word THE, it would have increased the likelihood the USPTO would register the mark.

Photo by Martin Kalfatovic licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

#trademark

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