← Forward Progress - A Chicago Bears Podcast
Forward Progress - A Chicago Bears Podcast
Chicago Bears superstar Caleb Williams wants trademark "Iceman"
00:30:47
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Dan Bernstein
Neighborhood.
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Dan Bernstein
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I mean, if you're a Bears fan, you're thinking Forward Progress. Come on. Forward Progress, a Chicago Bears podcast with Dan Bernstein and Matt Abeticola on 312Sports. It's just you and me today on Forward Progress and a Chicago Bears podcast. Talking Bears and NFL. And actually I didn't expect that there would be this much going on today, but as I was preparing, we got some things that are happening like late last night and this morning that are newsworthy when it comes to your Chicago Bears. And the first is in a lighthearted way that Caleb Williams buddy looks like he's going to be sticking around for a while. So I guess it's good news. If you have enjoyed the whatever fan fiction we've been writing regarding Caleb Williams, Pete Crowe, Armstrong, Connor Bedard, whoever else it may be. Modest Bou Zealous all being part of this, you know, super pro stars superhero sports group that is going to be growing up together here in Chicago. And we can only hope that something similar is in the offing for Caleb Williams, which I imagine it would be at this point as Pete Crowe Armstrong has apparently agreed or is finalizing a long term contract to stay here in Chicago. We know that those guys spent some time together and we got a kick out of imagining what their, what their, their life would be as Chicago superheroes. Athletes by day, fighting crime and saving the world by night. But it's fun to lock that in. I. I was thinking this where much like, like pca I've said is going to be a lot of young Chicago sports fans favorite player of all time. If things go well, if, if this is all, everything happens according to plan and health and whatever we want to, we want to hope against hope. But PCA is going to be one of these guys and everybody kind of knows it, that there's a lot of impressionable young people who are going to have their first experience rooting for a star player who is becoming that and realizing all those things right in front of our eyes. He's going to be, he's going to be on a lot of, a lot of posters in a lot of bedrooms and a lot of dorm rooms. There's going to be a lot of jerseys and jerseys and a lot of people who are going to imprint on, on pca. Same goes for Caleb. There's just these, those young Bears fans who are going to have him here. The pieces might change around him, but he's going to be a lot of Bears fans favorite player of all time. I mean, we need the success. It's all got to happen. But we know that is absolutely true. So congratulations to PCA and I hope Caleb sends him a thumbs up, as I'm sure he will. Also, there's a little bit of news coming out of Springfield today. We have A quote from Governor J.B. pritzker regarding the last efforts to push through the Arlington Heights plan and what they need or claim that they need the pilot program of the payment in lieu of taxes to give them what they refer to as tax certainty. And I've said very obviously this is a tax break for them. But it's not uncommon for large businesses to get these kind of tax breaks. Here's the question from today's gubernatorial press conference. This is from capitalfacts.com and Rich Miller, who covers a lot of what's going on in Springfield. So the question was to J.B. pritzker. The Arlington Heights mayor recently said they're feeling like the Bears will not wait until May 31 for a mega projects bill or like a deal to come through, that they want to get something done by the end of this month. Obviously both chambers are not in next week. This is the last week they're both in this month. One, do you feel pressure from the team to get something out by Thursday? And also, do you feel that's likely to happen? Here's the answer from Pritzker. I think we all feel like this needs to happen sooner rather than later and it is in the hands of the legislature. As you know, we've done a lot of work in our administration to try to put something together that'll work for both the state, the legislature and their concerns and the team itself. It's a pretty good deal that's been on the table that I think seems to have support broadly by the Bears ownership. And so it really now is in the hands of the House of Representatives and then the Senate to get something done in a timely fashion. I think it's interesting that he's essentially washing his hands of it at this point. Obviously, he's going to sign it when it gets to his desk. He's committed to that. He has worked to put all the parties in these equally advantageous positions. And I, I, I think it's interesting that he's kind of punting it along, to use the football term, and said, and said the executive branch is doing what it's doing. It's in the legislature. He's got his people who are obviously representing the push in both the House and the Senate of Illinois. And we'll see. I, I don't know what he knows at this point. If he knows that this thing can get fast tracked. If he has, if there's some understanding behind the scenes that he's got people who are ready to move it. But that was the answer I'm. And we'll learn more in the coming days what that means. Or he could be calling the bears bluff. And the, he could say that of course the bears are gonna wait until May 31st. If they have to wait until May 31st. They've waited this long. They said that there were gonna be shovels and it may just be his, his, his position is that if the bears want to go play in a toxic swamp and take what's being offered to them by Indiana and go ahead and do that and figure that all out and start doing your, your soil testing samples and deal with whatever backfill you're going to have to do and start actually understanding what is underneath this area where you're digging this, this former super fund site. Maybe he presumes that they're holding all the cards and that the Bears will indeed end up waiting a little bit longer for the legislation. They want to do what everyone expects them to do. So we may learn more in the coming days about that. And as always, when we do, we will certainly have it for you right here on Forward Progress. There is a comment from Tyreek Stevenson also that's making the rounds as well. And I was thinking about it. We, we kind of forgot about Tyreek Stevenson in everything that's going on with reshaping this secondary. And I'm still. Right. Maybe you are as well. But I'm still running into a lot of Bears fans that are saying, why do they let Kevin Byard go? Why did they let Nishan Wright go? What's going on? Why Brisker? What are they doing? And I just, I want to keep saying, how good do you think the Bears defense was last year? It wasn't very good. I didn't. I didn't believe that there was this much tied in. And it's possible I understand how the psychological dynamics works here, that there may be people who bought in last year and got excited about the Bears in a way that they haven't before. And we're devoting a lot more emotion to the Bears and they took time to know these players, and these players are gone. And maybe there's an adjustment that comes with that. Where I was just now, I knew when I was rooting for Kevin Bayard and he had this great year. How did they let him go? Well, because they weren't fast enough. They saw too many wide receivers just run by guys at too many times. Big chunk yards just because they're running straight by him. It happened in the packers game. If the Browns had a real quarterback, it would have really burned them in that game with that dude who was. Who was just cooking everybody in the secondary. And we saw it a little bit against the Rams. We just saw that they had too much speed. The Bears need more speed. So here's Tyreek Stevenson in what could be a contract year for him. It is a contract year. And he's quoted on an Instagram video during a workout. Is excitedly all amped up. He said, this shit's here about to be dangerous. I'm telling you, I'm coming back for everything the last two years. I put that on me this year. This for my son. I promise you. I promise you. Fine. It whatever keeps you from doing what you did in Washington against the Commanders, whatever keeps you from being an idiot, whatever maximizes your ability, whether you're doing it for yourself or you're doing it for your son or your children's children or somebody else's children, I'm. I support it. Tyreek. Whatever can get the most out of what the Bears saw on draft day. In thinking this could be an effective, aggressive, versatile cover corner who can also play zone. And. And if whatever they saw, whatever we've seen when he's been good, if it keeps him on task and if that's his motivation and he saw a couple Guys on the Bears get themselves a little bit more money elsewhere by playing well. Great, great. I'm, I am in absolutely full support of whatever it takes for Tyreek Stevenson to maximize his opportunities. And you know, maybe, maybe the first year was kind of a wash and last year was an adjustment year that everything had happened under Eberfluss and the, the fail Mary that cashiered the season because he was being stupid. All time stupid, like all time, famously forever stupid. It's like forever chemicals. That kind of stupid gets in the ecosystem and it stays there. And somehow there's like micro stupid that ends up our, in our water and in the aquifers and in the oceans and in the food that we eat. So it could be that like, like forever chemicals that is, that has risen to the level of forever stupid. So. And maybe it infected me long ago, but I'm hoping that if this realigns Tyreek Stevenson, he can shake off that year. He adjusted to a new coach, a new system, and let's see what happens on draft day. Let's see if, if he can ward off new challengers and continue to nail down his job. Because I hope there are new challengers and I hope it's not easy on anybody to make this squad because of the competition that's there. You know, there used to be coaches where I didn't believe them when they talked about it was a tough roster to make and we're going to have all kinds of competition, but there isn't really. And coaches are often lying when they talk about those things, but I don't think they're lying anymore. Then that's. It's kind of a big step that I actually, I believe these Bears coaches when they say stuff like that. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna hope for the best when it comes to him. This may be news that, that only excites me and it's kind of conditional, I guess. And I've had all these concerns about ESPN taking over NFL Network because you know how this happens. There's no reason to have redundant pieces. It's like when ESPN took over or ABC and ESPN merged eventually. Remember what happened to ABC Sports? It ceased to exist. And the Al Trout wig and Jim McKay and all the famous people part of ABC Sports, they didn't need ABC Sports anymore because they had espn. Now ESPN has NFL Network. And my first thought was, well, we're going to lose the option of NFL Network when it comes to coverage. And I don't watch a lot of non game coverage on television. Generally because a lot of it just doesn't interest me. And there's always games to watch and I much prefer watching games than watching pregame post game halftimes and the screaming shows. I have a very low tolerance for bad faith screaming shows aimed at airport bars and places with a lot of televisions and people who are 8 years old. But I love NFL Network's draft coverage because it's smart and it's a little bit more low key. It's not a lot of the whiz biz bang over the top screaming over the top graphics I like. And this could just be, it's designed for olds, but there's a little bit less of, it's, it's all a little calmer and I find it easier to digest and the information to for me is stickier than it is with a lot of the shouting and the, and sound effects and noises that I get and forced opinions sometimes, sometimes that I feel I get on espn. NFL Network is just a little more palatable and natural. And I like, I like Rich Eisen's demeanor as he's playing point guard for their coverage. So the news is front office sports reports. NFL Network will continue to televise its own draft coverage. Now, I want to be on the record here is this will, this will stop at some point soon. We know how this works. We know the dynamics of it. They're not going to have redundant pieces. They're not going to pay two people to do the job of one person. We're talking about the decisions of a publicly traded company. And there's no way that they're going to compete against themselves. This is just, this is basic business. So I will enjoy this while I can. And that is because April 1, all NFL Network employees become ESPN employees. So everybody works at NFL Network will have an expiring contract on April 1st. And then when that happens, ESPN is going to decide who they want to keep. But at least for this year, they're going to have their draft coverage. And I like that. I like at least having the option and I generally will default to NFL Networks coverage. So I'm going to say enjoy this while you can because usually stuff like this, we know what the forces are that will tend to result in a single company giving us fewer options rather than more options. Oh, and by the way, speaking of a company that will do the opposite of that for you, if you haven't heard yet, 312 Sports has announced today that we're expanding and we're going to give you more options and not fewer. I'm really excited about this. We mentioned it on dbu. We're pushing it out on socials. And I want to mention to you here on Forward Progress that our Cubs pod starts tomorrow. It is called off the Ivy. I'm hosting with Matt Abaticola and Cody Delmendo, who's sort of the, the up to date Cubs expert of the group. You know, he's been doing his podcast Wrigleyville Forever. He was involved with the Cubs coverage over at CHGO for a while and he's going to be stepping right into this as a 312 sports full timer. And I am. I could not be more excited to get my feet wet doing this Cubs pod and making that a part of your day as a Cubs fan, just like you have this as a Bears or NFL fan. We'll do Cubs, mlb, all kinds of stuff. Continue to cover everything on dbu. But we've got this as our, our baseball vertical right now. Our place where you know that you're going to get whatever the, whatever happened the day before. We're not going to get too high, we're not going to get too low. We're going to give you the whys and wherefores of what's going on. But make sure that right now you get subscribed and you go to the YouTube channel that you go to Apple Pods, you go to Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. And it's called off the Ivy. A 31 2, Sports Chicago Cubs podcast. Off the Ivy is going to be the place where you're going to want to hit it every day to know what's going on with the Cubs. We're going to have fun. We're going to break stuff down. There's going to be, you know, you know, the way I look at the game, I like to measure stuff. I'm not going to clobber you over the head with a lot of gory math, but we're going to make sure that every, everything is, is, is held to our standard that we know what's real and what's not. We've got, we've got our eye test, we've got all of stat cast and fan graphs and baseball reference at our disposal to make sure that you are informed and entertained when it comes to your Chicago Cubs. Now, I promised you something in this space when we did the story about Caleb Williams and his filings to trademark Iceman. Caleb Williams wants to be Iceman and he put out a long laundry list of what he wants to do with not just the name Iceman, but there are multiple logos that he has as part of this trademark application to be able to make a whole lot of money marketing his nickname and some other logos as well. So what I did was I talked to an attorney, a veteran attorney who specializes in just this kind of thing in intellectual property, in trademark and copyright law and what's involved. Because remember when I saw that Caleb Williams wanted to be, he said, look, I'm going to be Iceman. And I thought, well, wait, George Gervin may have something to say about that. George Gervin, who was the Iceman, as a certain generation knew the Iceman. And a lot of people brought up Jerry Iceman Butler as well, and some others. But George Gervin did the famous poster, Nike poster where he is sitting in his gray tracksuit with his hands on these, these silver basketballs on an ice throne and it just says Iceman underneath. Now here's what I learned and there I'm going to do my best to translate a lot of this legal stuff that I was. I got like a 20 minute crash course in some of this and I hope my notes are good enough. And I, I apologize to, to my lawyer friend if I get this wrong, but I'm going to do my best. George Gervin has what is called a right of publicity that he is allowed to publicize Iceman because of his fame, his personality, his achievements. He does have some right to, to that. The question is, what does he want to exercise and how does he want to exercise it? It's possible he could write a cease and desist letter before the application is even published. And he could say, hey, no, Caleb Williams, I'm pushing back hard against this and I'm going to dig in and you cease and desist right now. And there's going to have to be a negotiation with where I'm going to have to be compensated. If we do this, even if I want to talk about it, you can, you can make me a deal so he could do that if he wanted to. I don't have any, no indication that he has any desire to do any of that. But he certainly could. When a, when the trademark office publishes the application, George Gervin could, then we could wait for that and then he could file an opposition within 30 days and he could be heard and then that could be, that could be argued and he could decide, you know, I'm going to make my case as to why I should be entitled through my right of publicity, established right of publicity to have some Claim to Iceman. And what's really important is, as I'm learning here, the trademark identifies a source of goods and services. And therefore one who files for a trademark has to prove intent to use. And lawyers will refer to that as bona fide intent to use. It can't just be. I'm going to squat on this where I claim I'm going to put this logo on T shirts and beach towels and floppy hats or whatever it might be that it's got to be on the tag. It has to be more than ornamental and it has to prove the source of goods and services. So that's what Caleb Williams would have to do. There are other possibilities for Caleb's effort to be opposed. And one of these would be the bear claw CW logo that might be opposed by the Bears. And reasonably so that the Bears could say, well, if people see a bear claw, they may assume this is Bears property, that this belongs to the Chicago Bears, that this is created by the source of goods and services could be believed to be Chicago Bears. And I asked the lawyer and I said, okay, so the standard is what a reasonable person would think is the provenance of it. And he said, no. I said, well, what do you mean it's not a reasonable person? And he explained to me that's not the language that's used. The language is ordinary consumer. That a reasonable person would be a higher standard because there are plenty of ordinary consumers that wouldn't necessarily be reasonable. So an ordinary consumer would. Would have to be able to understand that that bear claw CW logo does not come from the Chicago Bears. And that has to be argued out. The Bears could oppose that. There's also the issue of the logo. And if you remember Caleb Williams in that pass to Roma Dunes A on the fourth down that extended the game against the packers, that allowed them to keep pushing it down the field and win. Was that that silhouette of him with his legs splayed out and his arm at a funny angle? And there were people on social media who then were superimposing the Jordan Jumpman logo over that and saying, oh, wow, he just did the jump, man. And it looks like from the application that this logo is indeed what Caleb Williams wants to make as the Iceman logo. Nike has an opposition here. If they want. I'm not saying they filed, I'm not saying they've sent a letter. But it would be completely understandable for Nike due to the similarity to Jumpman to say an ordinary consumer buying a pair of shoes might end up buying the wrong pair of Shoes. And I know you're rolling your eyes, but you, you are not part of a, a neutral sample here. You're a big sports fan who's already listening to sports podcasts about it. Of course you know the difference. But that's the argument. Would an ordinary consumer, if you say, yeah, go pick out those, those shoes, the basketball shoes that have the silhouette of the guy jumping up in the air and somebody comes home with a pair of Jordans instead of. Or somebody comes home with a pair of Caleb Williams instead of a pair of Jordans. That would be the Nike argument. That, and this is the point of this kind of law and this kind of specificity to say, would an ordinary consumer possibly get those mixed up in a way that could damage Nike's business? And those are the arguments that they're going to have. So what I learned further was Iceman from Top Gun is copyrighted via Paramount. There was the original work of authorship. That was an article that was written for a magazine where Paramount paid off the authors of the article even though they didn't have to, that a news article usually. And it was the opinion of this lawyer that they didn't need to pay off anybody. It's a news article that inspired Top Gun. There was no real ownership there of something creative. They just wrote an article about the Top Gun program that turned into an inspiration for Top Gun. But they did do it anyway. Now what? There is no way that Caleb Williams could make an Iceman shirt with a jokey Top Gun font or in the Top Gun style. He'd have to be very careful with that. Owning Iceman does not mean he could cross over and do anything that could be believed by an ordinary consumer to be generated by Paramount or the movie makers of Top Gun, not by a reasonable person, but by an ordinary consumer. So I thought that was cool. And I know, I just think this stuff is fun because I'm a dork and I know a lot of lawyers. And to hear a lawyer who specializes in this getting all excited about it is really kind of part of the fun. And there was a last bit here that I thought was really interesting. And it's sort of a trivia question about this idea of right of publicity due to fame. And it is, it varies greatly state to state. There are certain states that allow for post mortem control of someone's right of publicity due to fame for a period of time. And I was, it was explained to me that one of those that's often used as an example is one of those states is Tennessee And I'll give you a couple why do you think that is? Why do you think Tennessee has very specific laws about, on the, on their books about control of the right of publicity due to fame? All right, time's up. It's the Elvis law, that in Tennessee, after Elvis died and the operators of Graceland, the family, et cetera, there were laws rewritten to make sure that people couldn't immediately do whatever they wanted with Elvis's intellectual property and the estate of all of the likeness, you know, name, image, likeness and everything that they could do with what perhaps had been copyrighted, you know, tcb in a flash, whatever he would put on the golf balls with that silly little logo that he had. Sorry, editorial comment there, there. But that was known as the Elvis law. So I found that interesting. And if that's too deep a dive for you, I don't care because it entertains me and I found it fun. So we'll see if the Bears have any issues, if Nike has any issues, or if Caleb Williams knew that there might be a little bit of pushback, knew that there might be a little bit of negotiation and put all that in the application, knowing he might give some of it back. And we'll find out as it goes on if there's any official legal filings once the application is posted, published by the trademark office to see in whatever battle for Iceman there might be. And that is today's Forward Progress, a Chicago Bears Podcast One more reminder that we've got a new Cubs podcast. I know you heard me say it before, but we have a Cubs podcast. It is called off the Ivy. But do this right now. After you listen to this, make sure that you go in and get subscribed and get everything set up so you're not going to miss a day when it comes to our Cubs baseball coverage here on 31 2, sports. For Progress is stopped. Forward Progress Chicago Bears podcast with Dan Bernstein and Matt Abeticola on 312 Sports.
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