Boise State’s Silly Trademark For ‘Non-Green Football Fields” May Finally Get Challenged

Almost exactly seven years ago, we discussed the absolute silliness that was Boise State University somehow getting the USPTO to grant it a trademark for a football field that is “non-green.” If you’re not a college football fan, some context is in order. Decades back, the school didn’t want to pay to have its field resodded with grass, so it instead put in cheaper turf that was colored royal blue. If you’ve never seen the field on television or in person, it’s absolutely ugly. So ugly, in fact, that it’s also absolutely awesome and has become a distinctive part of the BSU brand. Because of that, getting the original trademark the school got for the blue-colored field made some sense. But in 2010, the school managed to expand the mark to include all fields that are “non-green.” From my original post on the matter:

Now, we could sit around and argue whether or not having a blue football field was a thing fit to be trademarked. Personally, considering the specific color the school used, I could buy an argument that fans that see the field do indeed think of Boise State. I certainly do. But the school expanded the trademark in 2010 to fields not just blue, but fields that are “non-green.” And that’s crazy. Bradlee Frazer, an IP attorney working with the school, has stated that any non-green athletic field carries with it the risk of confusion pertaining to Boise State. He can say that all he wants, but such a stance likely wouldn’t survive a challenge from another school.

But those challenges have never come, mostly because Boise State is quite liberal with freely licensing the ability to have non-green fields to other schools.

And that has continued to be true. Colleges and high schools that have decided to use non-traditional color schemes for their football fields have traditionally sought approval from BSU. And, to be clear, BSU has continued to be fairly sanguine about approving such uses, so long as there is no real callback to BSU. Because of that, the obviously and overtly broad trademark BSU has hasn’t ever been challenged.

That may be changing. SUNY Morrisville, a Division 3 school, recently put in its own synthetic turf, colored deep black. And the school reportedly didn’t seek any sort of approval from BSU in doing so.

By going emo, the school joined a handful of select college programs that have, over the last two decades, broken from the traditional gridiron greens, including Coastal Carolina, Eastern Washington, Eastern Michigan and Central Arkansas.

And yet, in joining the ranks of these non-verdant outliers, SUNY Morrisville went a step bolder by breaking a norm that has been dutifully conformed to by the other nonconformists: seeking permission from Boise State University, which, in 1986, became the first university to implement a non-traditional athletic field color with its now-famous, blue “smurf turf.”

And now we get to see whether BSU really wants to try to enforce its trademark and claim this is infringement, or else it risks breaking the precedent that all these schools need to seek permission for football fields that are not colored the traditional grass-green.

I certainly hope BSU does try to enforce its mark, if only so that SUNY Morrisville can fight back and get this stupid trademark invalidated, or at least pared back to covering the royal blue colored field. I can’t account for how or why the USPTO allowed such an overly broad trademark to be approved in the first place, but I am damned sure that any competent attorney for SUNY Morrisville could get it rescinded upon challenge.