As you may remember, at the end of 2009 I was blogging post game recaps not just here, but over at The Yankee Universe, which is an excellent site run by very well known bloggers in the community. I’ll be doing recaps again in the spring, but today, Moshe Mandel made known a letter he recieved from MLB on behalf of the Yankees. It goes something like this:

While the Yankees are very appreciative of their loyal and highly valued fan support,
unauthorized use of the Yankees Marks that would be confusing or misleading to the public, or
falsely imply some endorsement or sponsorship by the Yankees, cannot be tolerated. Although
the Website purports to be a “blog about Major League Baseball and the New York Yankees,” it
has clearly branded itself throughout with the Yankees Marks, including the Logo. Thus, you are
not using the Yankees Marks in a permissible manner but rather to brand your own online
service, and to create or imply a false impression that the Yankees have approved, condoned or
sponsored the Website.

Your unauthorized uses of the MLB Marks on the Website and in the Domain Name are
likely to cause confusion, mistake and deception as to the existence of an affiliation, connection
or association between your business on the one hand, and MLBAM, and/or other applicable
MLB Entities on the other, and constitute trademark infringement, dilution and unfair
competition in violation of federal and state law.

Accordingly, demand is hereby made that you immediately cease and desist from using
the YANKEE UNIVERSE name and the Logo, any other Yankees Mark and any other MLB
Mark in and as the name of your Website, to promote the Website, to seek advertising any other
commercial opportunities, in and as the Domain Name, and in any other manner that would
cause consumer confusion, dilution of the MLB Marks, or imply any sponsorship or
endorsement of your Website or its contents by any MLB Entity.

Yikes!

TYU is far from the only Yankee blog out there and far from the only one that uses the term “Yankees” in its marketing. So what gives?

Well, as you may know, the Yankees and Sloan Kettering have a Yankees Universe charity, and now a Yankees Universe fanclub as well.

While I’m not sure when the fanclub was trademarked, the charity was trademarked in 2006, which beats TYU by about two years.

So, while you can debate all you want as to whether or not Joe Blogger is expected to know about every single entity that a team trademarks, the fact is that TYU will need to change its name, and, uh, probably pretty soon at that. I don’t really know enough about law to go into any more detail except to say that it’s probably not a good idea for bloggers to take on a franchise such as the Yankees. I mean, as much as I like a good David-and-Goliath story…

Anyway, you can view their post and the name suggestions in the comments here.