There’s silly and then there’s silly….Above The Law report.
Few institutions are as insufferable as THE Ohio State University. Every time one runs across a Buckeye, they cartoonishly stress that the school isn’t Ohio State but THE Ohio State as though there’s some knockoff Ohio State University out there. There actually is a Berkeley College and you don’t see Cal running around saying THE Berkeley. And, unlike Ohio State, Berkeley is actually an institution with some credibility to lose.
Apparently, this fixation with avoiding nonexistent brand confusion has seeped into the DNA of the school itself because on August 8th, the school filed Application 88571984 with the trademark office to register the word “THE.” Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, the school wants to trademark the most common word in the English language. The goal is to sell merchandise that just has the word “THE” in all caps.
