Anybody who follows the news knows that the term “Florida Man” means a lot to citizens of the USA. If it’s mad, bad or just plain weird its pretty likely it’s something to do with Florida or Florida Man
The Tampa Bay Times reports..
For three years, a Florida man named Ryan Davis has run a Florida website called “floridaman.com” that features stories he’s aggregated from various publications about the bumbling antics of the Sunshine State’s ubiquitous superhero, Florida Man. You know the ones: “Florida Man drives Cadillac from sunroof down highway, says he’d rather go to jail than back to his wife,” and “Florida Man gets beat up by the Easter Bunny,” and “Florida Man resists arrest by singing karaoke.”
Lately he’s even started making money at it, selling T-shirts and other merchandise bearing slogans such as “Beware of Florida Man.”
Now the St. Petersburg resident has taken the next logical step. He recently applied for a trademark for the term “Florida Man.”
Davis said he isn’t looking to seize control of the ubiquitous term so he can block other people from using it in reference to Florida’s wacky news headlines.
After all, he’s aware that there’s a Twitter account called @_FloridaManthat’s been around for six years and has 435,000 followers. And he knows about the “Florida Man Challenge” on social media, where you Google your birth date and “Florida Man” to see what sort of wackiness took place on the day you were born. He sees neither of those as a threat to what he calls his “side hustle.”
Instead, he’s seeking to fight off anyone else’s attempt to claim ownership. Davis said he became concerned about the future of the term when he saw that the Oxygen television network plans to launch a new reality show called “Florida Man.”
