Tech Startup Picks A Trademark Fight With Tiger Woods' Sun Day Red

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It turns out that Nike, Tiger Woods' longtime apparel partner, wasn't the only company in the world that was less than pleased when the 15-time major winner introduced his new Sun Day Red apparel brand in February. A tech startup called Tigeraire out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana has taken issue with Woods' new brand, specifically its logo, and is taking its complaint to the courts.

According to its website, Tigeraire was originally founded in the summer of 2020 with the objective of making a cooler, as in temperature, helmet for the hometown LSU Tigers. With its Air Accelerator technology , the company developed a helmet for the Tigers called the Tigeraire Cyclone that enhanced player comfort inside the helmet.

Sun Day Red and Tigeraire couldn't be more opposite of companies given one is a golf apparel brand and the other is a tech company that has nothing to do with golf apparel, but their logos share similarities, at least they do in Tigeraire's opinion.

According to Business Report, Tigeraire has alleged that Sun Day Red launched with a logo "nearly identical" to its already established mark. Both company logos feature a striped, leaping tiger.

Woods' Sun Day Red logo contains 15 stripes to symbolize his 15 major championship victories, while the Tigeraire logo features a number of stripes as well.

Sun Day Red has submitted a trademark application, which Tigeraire is trying to block after filing a notice of opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in September. Sun Day Red responded by filing a federal lawsuit against Tigeraire in California. Tigeraire's intellectual property attorney Greg Latham believes the filing being done in California is inappropriate.

In its complaint, Sunday Red LLC alleges that after months of silence in negotiations, Tigeraire sent "an outrageous monetary demand to Sun Day Red, hoping to force Sun Day Red to provide (it) with an enormous and undeserved windfall."

Tigeraire CEO Jack Karavich claims that the similarities between his company's logo and Sun Day Red's have diluted his company’s presence.

"This year, our company has had marketing teams at major professional golf events, and at each one, we have experienced customer confusion between our brand identity and Sun Day Red’s," Karavich said in a statement. "We’ve had innumerable caddies of professional golfers, as well as high-profile personalities from ESPN, the Golf Channel, the PGA Tour, Greyson Clothiers and many more mistakenly think our logo is that of Sun Day Red."

It's fascinating, and surely incredibly costly for a tech startup to go toe to toe with a company founded and promoted by the greatest golfer in the world, but Tigeraire appears to see some sort of opportunity here.

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Mark covers all sports at OutKick while keeping a close eye on the world of professional golf. He graduated from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga before earning his master's degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee. He somehow survived living in Knoxville despite ‘Rocky Top’ being his least favorite song ever written. Before joining OutKick, he wrote for various outlets including SB Nation, The Spun, and BroBible. Mark was also a writer for the Chicago Cubs Double-A affiliate in 2016 when the team won the World Series. He's still waiting for his championship ring to arrive. Follow him on Twitter @itismarkharris.