The Jacksonville Jaguars defense turned into a monster last year, piling up pressures and sacks and generally wrecking havoc on opposing quarterbacks. It earned the self-appointed name "Sacksonville," which would eventually become a phrase trademarked by the team.
One problem: a former Jaguars player, Dan Skuta, says he was ahead of the curve, created the name years ago, and now he is trying to block the Jaguars trademark.
Via Frank Schwab of Yahoo! Sports, Skuta has filed a "Notice of Opposition" with the US Patent and Trademark Office alleging that Skuta has been using been using the phrase for a while now and in a commercial fashion.
Skuta started an Instagram account titled "Sacksonville" back in July of 2015 and has been selling merchandise at Sacksonville.org.
His attorneys claim, in his filing with the patent office, that the Jaguars "have actively supported Mr. Skuta's effort to pursue his commercial use of the mark 'Sacksonville' using Jacksonville Jaguar's social media account" and that the team "never opposed or objected to his use of the mark 'Sacksonville.'"
Indeed, the attorneys claim the "Jaguars repeatedly 'tagged' his posts and 'liked' 'Sacksonville' on the Instagram account."
Skuta has generated more than $3,000 in sales of merchandise on his Shopify store and believes that if the Jaguars secure a patent or trademark for #Sacksonville and start to sell their own gear, it will confuse consumers who might be looking for his "Sacksonville" gear.
The Jaguars did not really begin utilizing "Sacksonville" until the fall of 2017. The term took off last year with the swarming defense putting quarterbacks on their back and defensive lineman Calais Campbell was even named the "Mayor of Sacksonville" by the actual mayor of Jacksonville.
It's kind of preposterous that anyone can lock down the nickname "Sacksonville" -- it's a pretty obvious play on words involving a sack and Jacksonville -- but here we are. Unfortunately for the team, Skuta might have a pretty good case, although it seems equally preposterous that someone could nickname the Jaguars something and then the Jaguars not be able to utilize it on their own.
Skuta, by the way, signed a five-year, $20.5 million deal with the Jaguars in 2015. He would later be cut by the Jags in 2017, not long after some troubling offseason issues. He recorded 1.5 of his career seven sacks while playing for the Jaguars.
