Virginia Actuary Files Trademarks On New Washington Football Team Names

We have mentioned before that the money was on the brink of forcing Daniel Snyder to move away from the Washington Redskins nickname. Ben Fisher of Sports Business Journal first reported on Sunday that would definitely be the case, and now the team has made it official. However, this announcement of discarding the old name came before a new one has been decided upon, as the franchise works through trademark issues.

Will Brinson of CBS Sports noted that a man residing in Alexandria, Va. filed for all these trademarks recently:

A look into them reveals that many of these were filed, last week, by a man named Philip Martin McCaulay. Here's an example for Washington Veterans, which was filed by McCaulay on July 6th. McCaulay is an actuary, whose work includes publishing real estate math text books.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch notes that in total McCaulay has filed for 44 trademarks of potential Washington team names since 2014, and that he's been savvy enough to set up merchandising operations for all of them. He also says he'll set up a flag football league with the team names. This would insulate him, at least for a little while, against claims that he's a squatter with no intention of actually using the trademarks he's filed for.

If the franchise wants to use one of the names he's trademarked it's possible or even probable they would ultimately prevail in court, but it would take a longer time than they have between now and when football season is supposed to start. It will be interesting to see whether they pay McCaulay off, fight him, or try to figure out a name that hasn't been squatted on.