Rusty Close and Austin Padgett discuss trademarks and why the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation, rebranded itself as WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.
In this episode, Rusty Close and Austin Padgett discuss trademarks and why the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation, rebranded itself as WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.
No Infringement Intended, hosted by Rusty Close and Austin Padgett, is your go-to podcast for exploring the fascinating intersection of intellectual property and pop culture.
No Infringement Intended Podcast — Why Did the World Wrestling Federation Become WWE?
Hosts: Rusty Close and Austin Padgett
Recorded: October 24, 2024
Date Aired: December 12, 2024
Austin Padgett:
Hello, everyone. I welcome you to No Infringement Intended. And until our colleagues at the firm come up with another contender, this is the intellectual property podcast of the law firm, Troutman Pepper. With your host, Austin Padgett, that's me, and Rusty Close. This is episode two of the podcast, and I want to thank you listeners for an incredible response to our first episode. Firm management called our names over the intercom the other day, and Rusty and I were sweating as we marched up to the principal's office. So, imagine our surprise when the brass was commending us on our first episode, using words like important, valuable, earth-shattering, even necessary.
Well, let's just say, we owe our listeners a lot, and I'm really looking forward to our discussion today. Rusty, what are we talking about?
Rusty Close:
Austin. I got a question for you. What are your favorite wonders of the world?
Austin Padgett:
Oh man, Rusty, you may not have known this about me, but I was on a very serious pub trivia team back in my mid to late twenties, maybe even crossing into the early thirties. And we were, like I said, overly serious and had to memorize different sets of things so that we all combined our superpowers and the wonders of the world were on my list.
And so granted, it's been bit, but I can give you a lot of information about those.
Rusty Close:
So you're able to just rattle them off? There's a lot of debate about what are the wonders of the world today? But I mean, I'm a classicist, right? I'm the seven wonders of the ancient world. Those are the ones that matter to me.
Austin Padgett:
They're the only ones that matter in pub trivia as well.
Rusty Close:
that's good. I'm glad people stick to, you know, we have to have some rules and we have to know what's important in life. I mean, obviously the pyramid of Giza, there's the statue of Zeus, the hanging gardens of Babylon, you know - those are the big ones and Colossus at Rhodes or Colossus of Rhodes.
Those are some that really stick out to me.
Austin Padgett:
Yeah, the lighthouse of Alexandria is always a key item. We had a trivia master one time - it's always an angle that they take, right, to get you. And the one was like, “Which of the wonders were destroyed by earthquakes?” That's not something you just memorize typically. So that was an interesting one that I still remember losing the points on.
Rusty Close:
The Wikipedia page is helpful in that regard. You can rattle them off pretty quickly. We got Colossus of Rhodes, the lighthouse, and then the mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
Austin Padgett:
Yeah, I think there were three.
Rusty Close:
That's what it looks like. Yeah. I mean, we've got some arson, you know, for the temple of Artemis. Somebody must've been really upset with that.
Austin Padgett:
Right. There's a story there, for a future episode for sure.
Rusty Close:
Sure. Sure. You know, we talk about the seven wonders of the world, but do you know who the eighth wonder of the world is?
Austin Padgett:
I have a, I have a distinct memory, in boyhood of who that is. But why don't you tell me?
Rusty Close:
Yeah, I mean the one and only Andre the Giant - universally beloved and known as the eighth wonder of the world. But years later, we have a ninth wonder of the world. And do you know who that is?
Austin Padgett:
Definitely know who that is. You are talking about Chyna.
Rusty Close:
Lay it on us. It is Chyna. Chyna was a wrestler in WWF/WWE. She was a member of D-Generation X. Do you know any other D-Generation X members?
Austin Padgett:
I believe, let's see, Triple H. I think he was the ringleader, if I remember correctly.
Rusty Close:
I would say him and Heartbreak Kid were kind of the co-leaders. I would say.
Austin Padgett:
Sure, yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't want a coup,
Rusty:
Don't step on anyone's toes.
Austin Padgett:
Right, that's right. I don't know that I can recall - this was not on my trivia list, for that pub trivia.
Rusty Close:
So you weren't the wrestling expert? You were the wonders of the world. It makes sense. You can't know everything. There was a tag team called the New Age Outlaws - the Road Dogg Jesse James and Billy Gunn. There was also, let's see - eventually X- Pac was part of D-Generation X.
Austin Padgett:
Okay, yes, that rings a bell.
Rusty Close:
Classic. But you might wonder why on earth are we talking about D-Generation X in an episode about intellectual property and pop culture? And we're going to get there, don't you worry.
Austin Padgett:
Oh, I'm not worried, but I love where this is going already.
Rusty Close:
So, D-Generation X was, let's say, notorious for pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable in wrestling content, which you might say, what's not acceptable in wrestling content. But what they were putting on TV at the time, which would have been kind of the mid-90s, was pretty crude. It was pretty – they were upping the stakes from what people were used to.
Austin Padgett:
I remember my mother having a real problem with the direction of wrestling at that time.
Rusty Close:
She was a huge fan, right? She's a huge fan.
Austin Padgett:
Right. Then, it took a turn. Now, we're testing the limits.
Rusty Close:
Yes. We can't keep up with this. They were part of what was ushered in as the Attitude Era, from what we knew at the time as the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation. So, why does the Attitude Era matter? Okay. So, it comes along in the midst of what's going on, it's called the Monday Night Wars. So, you've got WCW on the one hand.
Austin Padgett:
Nitro, I remember.
Rusty Close:
Absolutely. And you've got WWF on the other hand. I think for people who grew up when we grew up, we knew more of the WWF; Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre the Giant. But WCW was always there in the background, sort of as a secondary promotion.
Austin Padgett:
I'll tell you what my secondary was real quick, Rusty, is the local wrestling circuit in my local – what we would graciously call a civic center. I learned a lot of lessons about life in those local wrestling circuit matches, but go ahead.
Rusty Close:
As we all should have. As coming of age in the mid to late eighties. So, WCW kind of got the upper hand on WWF during the Monday Night Wars. And there was a faction of wrestlers, NWCW, called the NWO, the New World Order.
Austin Padgett:
Yes.
Rusty Close:
Hulk Hogan.
Austin Padgett:
Hulk Hogan, yes. I remember. Yes.
Rusty Close:
There you go. Right? So, he comes over from WWF. Hulk Hogan's the biggest, if we're going to use some wrestling terminology. He's the biggest face in the business. He's the biggest baby face, the biggest good guy. He turns heel, he becomes a bad guy, and joins the New World Order. This is a shock to the wrestling world, but it made wrestling more popular than maybe it had ever been at that point. So, WWF has to counter that in D-Generation X, and the Attitude Era went a long way toward turning the tides back towards WWF in terms of what was the most prominent wrestling organization.
Again, why are we talking about this today? In the midst of the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era, what we knew as the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation, rebranded itself as WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. Our question today is, why did they go to the trouble of making that change?
Austin Padgett:
Yes. It's a really important moment in history. I think we can unlock some important legal concepts.
Rusty Close:
I mean, let's hope so.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. Let's go for it. So, where does this all start, Rusty?
Rusty Close:
In the early sixties, we have to talk about a different WWF, the World Wildlife Fund. So, we're talking about 1961. This organization comes around. It's going to be an international fundraising organization for supporting the work of conservation groups worldwide. I think, one of the things that's important to keep in mind from someone who's looking at this from my perspective, or I'm guessing, your perspective, people of our age, and who grew up watching Hulk Hogan, and watching Saturday Night's main events, and watching WrestleMania. It's like, who cares about the World Wildlife Fund, right? But this was a truly global organization.
Austin Padgett:
Interesting. Okay.
Rusty Close:
In the late seventies, we get what comes to be known as the WWF. So, we got nearly a 20-year head start. I'm going to try to say wildlife and wrestling just to kind of keep the two WWFs separate. So, we've got wildlife that's been around for roughly 20 years. Wrestling comes along in the late seventies. It's really a rebranding of what was WWWF. It becomes WWF. So, it's not something that is new and comes out of the ground, out of whole cloth, but it's rebranded as WWF.
So, these guys coexist for a decent period of time. But the WWF wrestling really starts to grow in prominence in the eighties. By the mid-80s, we have the first WrestleMania. We have The Rock and wrestling revolution, I think, they called it. This is MTV And WWF wrestling, sort of co-branding and co-promoting things together. It's really part of the lexicon at that point.
There's a WWF wrestling logo that I think you would recognize. We refer to it as the block logo. So, if you think back on that time, or if you see clips from that time, you're going to see this block logo.
Austin Padgett:
The two Ws with an F coming out of the side of them. Okay. Yes. I know what you're talking about.
Rusty Close:
Exactly. The Ws are kind of stacked on top of each other. That's exactly right. Wildlife didn't object to this use. So, keeping in mind, they're a global organization. This is mainly in the U.S. at the time. Now, moving forward, we get to the late eighties, wrestling starts to grow into a more global brand.
Austin Padgett:
The world must know about this.
Rusty Close:
I mean, we're talking about Hulk Hogan body slamming Andre the Giant. It's just a monumental event. So, now, we're going to get into some IP concepts. I know everyone's been on the edge of their seats. In the late eighties, wrestling starts to expand globally, but they also start filing trademark applications for the use of WWF. Now, we're right in your wheelhouse. They file an application for WWF in Class 41 for entertainment services, namely the production of wrestling events live and on TV. Wildlife objects to this application.
Austin Padgett:
Interesting, okay.
Rusty Close:
So, school us on what it means when we talk about a class associated with a trademark.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. So, anytime we file a trademark for anything, really in any country, but I'm really talking about the U.S. here. But the class concepts are an international concept as well. So, we're going to tell a trademark office a few things. We're going to tell them who owns the mark, what the mark actually is, whether it's a word, or a design, it can be other things. And maybe we'll have an episode about that at some point. You know, in some cases, you need to tell them how you started using it, like when. So, your date of first use, that matters in some countries, particularly the U.S.
But then, one of the most strange things for clients is when we go into a class, because we've got to tell the trademark offices what we're doing with these marks. That is, we're not just registering the mark in general, we're telling the trademark office what we're doing in connection with it. So, for example, if you're the WWF wrestling, we're filing for entertainment services for exhibitions of wrestling matches or something like that. That's going to go in Class 41, because that's where all of the entertainment stuff is supposed to be located.
So, the trademark offices have devised this categorical system of about 45 different groups of things, where like things are grouped together for the most part. So, one of the ways that it's treated is that, you often pay by class of what you're doing. So, if you try to file a trademark in one class and it costs one fee, and if you try to add another class,
it costs a little extra. So, that's one of the ways. But another reason it exists is to help manage trademark searching, trying to keep things organized, and categorized, so that people can keep track of what items are. But the concept is, is that, like goods and services are grouped in like classes. So, all clothing and apparel is essentially in Class 25. Paper goods, if you wanted the Hulk Hogan poster with the WWF logo on the bottom of it, that would be in Class 16 with all the other paper goods.
So, you can go on and on and on, but that's what a class is. So, you can file – if you're filing today for a mega brand, you're filing all sorts of classes oftentimes.
Rusty Close:
Okay, that makes sense. I didn't mention this, but wildlife has their own trademark registrations at this point. So, they're in the game as well. When they object to wrestling's application, they do it on likelihood of confusion grounds. So, what are they saying when they say, "No, no, no. Wrestling, you can't get a trademark for WWF, because there's likelihood of confusion?"
Austin Padgett:
Yes. The main concept there, and that's the legal standard of, is there a trademark infringement? If there is, there has to be a likelihood of confusion. So, if you go to a court and you're going to say somebody else has violated your trademark, you essentially have to prove two things for a basic case. You have to prove that you had priority. That is, you were the first to use it. Because if you're not the first, you're the last, as some other famous racer once said. But the other item, which is usually the more complex item is, is there a likelihood of confusion? Basically, wherever you're at, different courts have different sets of factors that you look at. But you're usually looking at, okay. How similar are the marks? How similar are the goods and services? Are they offered to the same types of consumers? Are they sold in the same types of places?
There's a list of factors that different courts and forums go down, but that's essentially what you're looking at. So, I usually try to keep those glasses on when I'm looking at an issue with clients. I'm looking at it from, okay. I've got to look at this, because trademark act, by its heart is a consumer protection statute." So, I've got to look at it and think, okay, how would a reasonable consumer get messed up here? Is there a likelihood of confusion between these two marks? That is when a consumer approached this and think, "Oh, I think I've seen that mark before. I think that's associated with this other brand." Or maybe, maybe this brand has slightly expanded into a close space and is now offering XYZ products.
When you think about trademarks, it's not, "Okay, I'm only going against my direct competition." It's, "Okay. Is a consumer likely to be confused here?" You expand the target a little bit because you think about, "Okay. what would a consumer think of in modern day parlance of approaching a store, and seeing a brand. Are they in the same aisle? Are they even in the same store?" Those sorts of questions. I mean, it's a really practical look at what's happening. It gets much more nuanced, of course, in cases, but that's the general concept.
Rusty Close:
So, in this case, you know, the marks themselves are identical, which I think is one of the factors. We got WWF. But if we look at the services that are being offered in association with those marks, you start to think, how can a reasonable consumer be confused by these two things, right? I mean, we've got, on the one hand, a charitable organization that's focused on endangered species with their panda logo. And on the other side, we've got a wrestling organization, no pandas, maybe King Kong Bundy is panda.
But I think, someone on the outside looking in looks at this and goes, "What on earth? There's no likelihood of confusion here." So, that might give us some insight into what happened next, because the two parties enter into a letter agreement and it puts some minor constraints on the wrestling organization.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. Just breaking in real quick. That's a pretty common results in a lot of trademark disputes, is that there's some sort of resolution reached between the parties. Because at the end of the day, they look at and they say, "Okay. We know our consumers best and what we expect from our brand. So, we're going to come up with some agreement as to the terms of our coexistence."
Rusty Close:
So here, really the only limitation on wrestling was that they couldn't
use WWF in Times New Roman, apart from World Wrestling Federation. They couldn't just use it in and of itself. Really, it sounds like in sort of newspaper text, and that sort of thing, press releases. But more or less, they could continue on using it in the way that they had been using it, aside from this minor limitation. The flip side of that being, wildlife wasn't going to oppose their marks.
Austin Padgett:
Got you.
Rusty Close:
So, it seems here that – and we're reading between the lines a lot, but maybe wildlife made the calculation that, "We're going to have a tough case here if we're saying likelihood of confusion. We don't love it, but we're going to have a hard time making our case. Let's put some restrictions on them, and hopefully we'll move forward amicably."
Austin Padgett:
Yes. Save the cost of litigation, a potential full loss, but get what you need for the day, what you think you need at least for the day done, and create some level of distinction that they're going to abide by. Yes, it happens a lot.
Rusty Close:
That was probably their mistake, because they trusted their counterpart in this agreement, who to put it into wrestling terms and to bring back our beloved Stone Cold Steve Austin gave them the double middle fingers as far as this letter agreement was concerned.
Austin Padgett:
So, you're saying, they should have opened the can early.
Rusty Close:
They should have opened the proverbial can on them early on and they did not. So, we moved forward from 1989, wrestling is exploding and expanding globally. And we had to keep in mind that that's a big component of this, is that wildlife was a global organization. Registrations and operations throughout the world. Now, wrestling is starting to move into that space. Wrestling begins applying for trademarks throughout the world. There were objections in some jurisdictions by the trademark offices themselves. Otherwise, wildlife was opposing the applications themselves.
So, we're talking about administratively time -consuming, cost-consuming stuff that's going on to sort of deal with all of these disputes that are going on worldwide. The wrestling organization still maintains that there is absolutely no risk of confusion because the operations are just so different. So, another important thing we have to consider during this timeframe, we're talking early nineties. 1992, wrestling gets embroiled, shall we say, in a steroid scandal.
Austin Padgett:
Oh, man. Rusty, the next thing you didn't tell me is that, this isn't real.
Rusty Close:
I would never say that. I would never ever say that. Steroid scandal, I think if you see wrestlers, this would not be a shocking thing to you, but the DOJ gets involved. This is in headlines. This is also a well-known thing. Ultimately, Vince McMahon, who's the owner of the wrestling organization. He gets charged with possession of steroids, to distribute steroids. It's a big, big deal and a big, big problem. and let's just say, black eye for the organization.
So, again, if you're the wildlife organization and this is all going on, maybe your likelihood of confusion argument isn't so strong, but you have even more reason that you don't want to be associated or you don't want people to make some association in their own mind between the two companies. So, in the midst of all of this, the wildlife organization eventually files a lawsuit in Switzerland. So, things come to a head. They've had enough. This is going on everywhere. Now, we're going to file a lawsuit. The parties have to figure out a way to make this whole situation sort of go away.
Again, I think we're talking about extraordinary resources, a lot of time, a lot of distraction.
How can we make it go away?
Austin Padgett:
Right. In that wrestling super center, Switzerland.
Rusty Close:
Everyone knows that Switzerland is a hotbed of professional wrestling.
Austin Padgett:
Absolutely.
Rusty Close:
So, the Judge in Switzerland says, "It's unlikely that there will be any direct confusion with respect to the companies. In this case, it was really specific to their magazines because wrestling had started to distribute a magazine. So, you get WWF wrestling magazine, and wildlife has their own magazine. And sort of, this is the crux of that Switzerland case. The judge says, "Unlikely that anybody's going to confuse these two things and think they come from the same organization." But what the judge did say is there's a real possibility of indirect confusion. What can you tell us about indirect confusion in this context?
Austin Padgett:
Yes. Indirect confusion. Around this time, you're starting to get some expansion of the likelihood of confusion doctrine, into looking at, "Okay, that's really helpful analysis when competitors are going at it, or close competitors. But now, we start to have these concepts, like in the 1995, there's essentially a new trademark act at the federal level that's kind of piggybacking on some long-held state legislation that it's called dilution.
So, you start to see that people say, "Okay." There's not only this heightened sense of the bread-and-butter competitor against competitor management of trademarks and seeing what's going on. But we have mega brands now in all sorts of areas, and we have famous marks, and we have all sorts of resources that are getting poured into brands and helping consumers understand not only that this is a brand, but it's a worldwide phenomenon. So, you start to see these concepts stretch out more into new protections.
So, whether you want to call it indirect confusion, or dilution, or there are some other names of these concepts. You start around this time – this is really when you start to see a kind of more formal expansion at broad levels of kind of what counts as protecting a trademark. It's not only is there a likelihood of consumer confusion, but particularly for famous marks or important marks. It's, you know, how can we add further protection to this. It's somewhat rooted in, hey, we're putting a lot of money into this and time. This is an important mega brand.
But, it's also from the consumer standpoint of saying, "Hey, mega brands also serve this purpose and we can't have something that becomes connected to it in such a way that harms it, either by – and this comes from the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, is by blurring the trademark that is kind of mixing it in and taking some edge off of the distinction of a famous mark, or by tarnishment. That is selling the good name of a famous mark with something that you're doing that's of lesser stature.
Rusty Close:
So, that makes sense, especially in this context. One of wildlife's contentions was even the slightest chance of confusion or association between their organization and the wrestling organization was likely to cause them injury. So, we've got lawsuit in Switzerland, we've got trademark applications throughout the world that are being contested and disputed. So, let's get back to the negotiating table. Sorry about the letter agreement. Sorry we didn't abide by the terms. You can totally trust us this time. If we enter into a contract, we'll behave. So, in 1994, they enter into the settlement agreement, end of '93, beginning of '94.
Austin Padgett:
Enter a good timing. Right.
Rusty Close:
Yes. Right. So, this is way more restrictive than the letter agreement was, but they had also – they being wrestling had started to expand globally. So, that makes sense. They had to cease all use of WWF in any language. So, we're not talking Times New Roman here. We're talking, don't do it, but they could continue to use the block logo that we talked about earlier. So, they can use the logo, but they can't use WWF in any fonts they were aware of. They cannot file any more trademark applications and they have to withdraw any that are pending. They are allowed to occasionally make oral use of WWF during live events, which I think is probably just a practical consideration. The organization's been around for 20-some-odd years at this point, and it's a little bit hard to imagine people are going to pivot on a dime, and can't say it anymore.
So, there we go. We've got our agreement in place. We're going to go our separate ways. We're going to live happily ever after. That's the end of the episode. No, it's not.
Austin Padgett:
Oh, I was wrapping up here.
Rusty Close:
Yes. You hear the glass break, Stone Cold's coming down the ramp, and he's giving –
Austin Padgett:
Beers in hand crushing together.
Rust Close:
Absolutely. He's given the double metals to the Wildlife Fund again. By 1997, according to court records, wrestling had ignored the contract. They had adopted wwf.com as their website. And not only had they done all of this, they came up with an altogether new logo, it's known as the scratch logo. So, you may have seen this, again, part of the Attitude Era.
So, you're the Wildlife Organization and you're just going, "What are we going to do with these people? No matter what we try to do, we try to be a good negotiating partner. We do come to an agreement and they just ignore us." So, they file more lawsuits to try to resolve this situation. We've talked about trademark concepts. This really becomes more of a breach of contract situation. The court essentially says, "You've ignored this. You have blatantly disregarded this contract that you have entered into." Wrestling tries to make some – they try to defend themselves, and it's not really, "No, we haven't breached the contract." They make some arguments that, "Oh, no, no, the contract didn't prohibit us from doing wwf.com. It didn't prohibit
us from adopting this new scratch logo," which are the kind of arguments that seems like it'd be a little tough to make with a straight face.
But they also said, "But even despite all of that, the agreement shouldn't be enforceable because it's too restrictive on us. It's going to cost us $50 million to rebrand. And so, you should just throw the agreement out anyway." Let's just say, the courts don't do that.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. An interesting theory to the case.
Rusty Close:
It is creative, let's say. We have to be zealous advocates for our clients. This is one of those where I think you're getting creative with what your defenses are.
Austin Padgett:
Right. Yes, sometimes you're more limited in the circumstances than what you're given. But the interesting part of this is, we've kind of covered some really core concepts of trademark law here. We've covered likelihood of confusion, the expansion of those concepts. We've talked about classification, and the differences, and goods, and services. But really, what it sounds like is, this is an issue of, kind of expanding globally with the trademark beyond – you start in the U.S., and then, all of a sudden, you have some worldwide fame and you have to kind of anticipate what happens next.
That's one of the interesting parts of working in this area, is trying to figure out, what counts as a win here, where could this possibly go, and how can we head off potential issues. When you're dealing with trademarks, trademarks are thought of on the geographical level, basically country by country. And so, your U.S. trademark doesn't get you anything anywhere else for the most part. There's some tricks, and tools, and treaties that you can put to your use, but you really have to think about kind of strategically a global vision of what's going to happen. But that's tough to do as a business's dynamic, and coming together over time, and anticipating what might be happening in, let's say, Switzerland or anywhere else across the globe, and what you're trying to get ahead of. That can be tough.
So, this is one of those prime examples of where trouble comes in in trademarks, and how you need to anticipate problems, and what are your limitations, how can you come to coexist, all those sorts of questions.
Rusty Close:
Yes. I think this is a perfect example of how that plays out because wildlife was trying to deal with a sort of localized problem. Maybe we don't want to be associated with wrestling. It's corny. It's different than what we are. But they couldn't have anticipated that it was going to have a sort of explosion in popularity. They couldn't have anticipated this steroid scandal. They couldn't have anticipated this move to this sort of body or content. So, sort of all of these things come together and make the earlier negotiations seem insufficient.
So, you try to escalate it, you try to deal with it another way, that becomes insufficient. And finally, you've got a court that sort of steps in and says, "Look, sorry, wrestling, this contract can be upheld, and you need to change your name. You can't use it anymore." So, what ultimately happens, and at the end of the day, it took nearly 20 years, but I do think, wildlife walks away a winner in some ways. They are now WWF. Wrestling is now WWE. They had to go through the rebranding. There's some interesting history there, it sort of goes along with the Attitude Era. They had this campaign of get the F out.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. I remember saying that.
Rusty Close:
Right? So, they sort of, I think, I wouldn't say used it to their advantage, but
they tried to use it to their advantage. They tried to make it –
Austin Padgett:
Look the best of it.
Rusty Close:
Exactly. We are more of an entertainment organization, so WWE is a better fit for us. They sort of do all this stuff. But even to this day, if you watch, there was a recent Vince McMahon multi-part documentary on Netflix. There's lots of old clips on there. There's old clips where you can see the block logo. Then, there's a time period, and this goes back to the 1994 agreement. There's a time period where you can see that it has to be blurred out. So, they've still got to deal with the consequences of this situation years and years later. There was a interview – one of the many interviews, but one of the interview, and somebody says, WWF as they're talking about the history. I had the captions on, and it said WWE in the captions.
So, sort of these weird consequences that continue to play out even to this day. But if you look at what the court said about the agreement and sort of upholding this contract, some of the language that they used, maybe because it was in Switzerland, they were using terms that we don't normally use. But the image of the fund is antithetical to that of the federation. The fund wants to avoid insalubrious connotation when the initials WWF are used. So, again, it's like, who comes out the winner here? I mean, I think, I guess wildlife does, but I still think back to how much resources had to go into dealing with this problem for nearly 20 years. How many people's time, how much money could have gone toward preserving endangered species or panda environments, or whatever the case may be, and they're dealing with this problem day, after day, after day, after day.
Austin Padgett:
Listen, Rusty, they're paying trademark attorneys, and that is a fine spend of money for any business organization.
Rusty Close:
It's a good point and probably the main point we always need to keep in mind.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. Well, I think we've kind of brought out a lot of concepts here and I don't know, looking back at it if I'd change anything.
Rusty Close:
I think wildlife would have changed some things, but we can't speak for them. But I do think it kind of brings up all these interesting ideas about likelihood of confusion, and delusion, and all of these concepts. So, when you see brands and you think about why did they rebrand? Why did they do this? Why did they do that? Maybe it'll give people some context as to how those things play out.
Austin Padgett:
Yes. I think this will be a pivotal episode moving forward as we build on these concepts. Oh, with that, I don't have any more. Rusty, you got anything?
Rusty Close:
No. I just hope everyone comes back, joins us for the next episode, and we look forward to it.
Austin Padgett:
Again, thanks folks for joining us. Remember to go smash that like, get that subscribe hit. We're available on all platforms. We certainly appreciate you listening. Thanks, everyone.
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