Its #IPThursday again good people! Sorry for the wait. This week we take a look at how and why the WWF changes its name to the WWE. The chat today is can identical trade marks in completely separate industries co-exist.

Lets start with a little recap, Vince McMahon wanted to create a wrestling company that would be the biggest in the world. At the time, he worked with his father, Vince Senior, who owned a wrestling company.

There were a few other wrestling companies around at the time, but none that were global brands. So in 1983 Vince and his wife Linda bought his father’s company and the World Wrestling Federation was born.

Vince immediately got to work. He gained a lot of traction when he signed Hulk Hogan in 1983. Hogan had starred in Rocky III and his popularity boosted the brand.

As you can imagine, the full name World Wrestling Federation is quite a mouthful. So people started using the acronym and the company became known as the WWF. They had rebranded and introduced WWF logos.

Throughout the 80s and early 90s, WWF became a global brand and the name became synonymous with the wrestling company. Except there was one problem, and it was the size of a Panda. Which brings us to the second Party in our story.

Around 1989, the WWF received a cease and desist letter from the World Wide Fund for Nature. The original WWF but I’ll call them the WWFund for now. It was founded in 1961 by a few guys who were passionate about protecting endangered species.

They were Victor Stolan, Julian Huxley and Ed Nicholson. They settled on the acronym WWF as the name of the business and took a picture of a Panda named Chichi as their brand image.

Chichi was a Panda who lived in the London Zoo in the 1950s. At the time, he was the only known Panda in the western side of the world. Sidenote: I’m not surprised Pandas are endangered, what is this?

Anyways, I digress!! In 1989, the Wrestling Federation got a letter from the WWFund. They alleged that they are the true owners of the WWF trade mark and they should stop using it. The WWFUnd also opposed a bunch of the Wrestling co.s trade marks worldwide.

Vince’s wife Linda was the CEO of the company at the time and she hit back at the Fun. They said that there is no confusion between the two companies, so they should be allowed to co-exist.

However, at the time, Vince was facing possible jail time for supplying steroids to his wrestlers ( and also himself). And so possibly under a lot of pressure, Linda agreed to stop using the WWF trade mark to promote wrestling. Yea he was definitely juicing .

They agreed to limit use of the written word WWF, but they wouldn’t stop spoken use of the word. If you think about it, it wouldn’t make much of a difference except for selling merchandise.

In terms of the agreement the WWFederation could continue using the word in full, as long as they used it with their current logo. But if you know anything about Vince McMahon, you’d know that he’s not bullied easily. And I’m sure he didn’t agree with Linda settling.

The man survived a whole steroid saga that went to court so what is a small trade mark dispute? Almost as soon as the agreement was signed, the Wrestling Federation was referring to itself as the WWF again. In fact, in 1997 they registered a website for the WWF.

And so only 6 years after the agreement, the WWFund and Wrestling Federation were back in the ring again. This time WWFund sued the WWFederation for trade mark infringement and breach of contract. They said the wrestling company had breached the agreement they signed in 1994.

The Fund took them to court in the UK and Vince could not believe it. I believe the words he used were “How dare those Panda idiots do this! Nobody confused them with a wrestling company anyway!”.

So the matter was heard in a UK court. Vince and his lawyers argued (in nicer terms this time) that no one would confuse them with the “Panda idiots”. For the most part, it seems the judge agreed with the WWF in that no one is likely to confuse the two companies.

On the other hand, the WWFund argued that many people would think they were associated with the “steroid junkies”. Their argument was that the trade marks are very popular, identical and so there is a huge likelihood that people would be confused.

Although the judge said its unlikely that people would confuse the two companies, the agreement signed by Linda, on her own free will, was binding and the WWFederation had clearly breached it several times. Now these clips from Vince makes so much sense....

Anyway Vince argued that Linda was under extreme pressure at the time with the steroid saga and they just didn’t want any smoke, so they simply signed the ting.

However, the judge wasn’t having it and they were ordered to stop using the name WWF. What followed was an intense marketing campaign from the wrestling company.

And so in May 2002, the WWF changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment, “WWE”. Their brand was “WWE Get the F Out Of Here”. It was brilliant and in time, everyone called it the WWE.

Vince reminded the world to “Get The F Out”. This is him explaining the change.

Only the really stubborn people still call it the WWF. And if you wanna see someone’s age, just ask them what they call the wrestling company. If he still calls it the WWF, that man is should have a family and kids .

Anyways this case is interesting coz it touches on an important question in trade mark law. Does the fact that trade marks are identical mean that they automatically can’t coexist. Even when the industries are very far removed?

The answer is a simple no. We can have identical trade marks but as long as they are in different industries, they can coexist. Vince lost here because they signed a bad deal.

The internet has also made it harder to distinguish between businesses. Especially nowadays with Google search results. They may have had a good chance had they not signed the deal.

Can you think of identical trade marks in different sectors that coexist in trade? I can think of one, McDonalds Bricks and McDonalds restaurants.

Big Lesson: Always think of the future implications of what you sign. Its easy to sign a Bad Deal. Just because a trade mark is identical to yours, doesn’t mean there will be confusion in trade. And thats the ultimate test of Infringement!

Yall should check out the podcast too @6ftweights