Major League Baseball is calling foul on Don Mattingly and has let him know with their own sentiment: an opposition. MLB is not happy with Mattingly’s choice of logo, claiming in large part that the logo is confusingly similar to its well-recognized MLB logo.

This is not the first inning. In fact, MLB took its original swing against Mattingly’s company, Mattingly Hitting Products, Inc., in mid 2007, when it filed an opposition at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Proceedings were suspended, however, until last month, when Mattingly filed his answer.

Mattingly, aka “Donnie Baseball,” who both began and ended his career with the New York Yankees and was purported to be as popular as Babe Ruth, had a career batting average of .307 and over 220 RBIs. Mattingly also holds the MLB Grand Slam record, His logo contains his retired number, 23, which Mattingly also used for his restaurant, Mattingly’s 23 (which closed down in the late 90s). Mattingly, also maintains an eBay store, called Don Mattingly’s 23.

Mattingly’s logo in question, features the trademark “23” in the shadow image of a player taking a swing. The MLB logo shows a shadow image of a player facing the same direction, and poised for a swing, begging the question of how many ways one can depict a hitter.

Surely, this matter is not over ‘til it’s over, but of note (and also called into question on the TTABlog), is Mattingly’s attorney’s first affirmative defense that “Opposer may have failed to mitigate losses and damages.” Must be American League rules, because that’s a new one for us.

This entry was posted by Tsan Abrahamson on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 4:44 pm and is filed under TTAB Practice, Trademarks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.