A MATRAT is anyone that spends 24/7 On The Mat. Matrat was the pioneer of MMA and no gi submission tournaments. When Tapout was selling out of there car Matrat was putting on the events so they could sell there t-shirts. Matrat is the OG of MMA and no GI submission tournaments. MATRAT is a registered trademark for only the real submission practitioners. Only sold in MMA stores and at http:www.mmamatrat.com. If you don’t spend 24/7 on the mat then don’t sport it. If you do we want to post you on our MATRAT blog. Send us your video or youtube caption. It is not about us it is about you. On a Mission for Sport Submission. You can reach us on our contact page.

Matrat was in the MMA Mix to make the sport legal with rules. Not fence sitting and letting someone else do all the work.

Matrat is a registered trademark.

TRADEMARK LAW: An Overview

The United States trademark laws, when combined with our federal copyright as well as state and federal unfair competition and similar laws, create a body of protection for intellectual property owners. Whether you are such an owner, want to become such an owner or wish to use another party’s creative property, you must be familiar with such laws in order to both market your properties and avoid infringing upon the rights of others.
Let me, for the sake of this article, limit the discussion to trademark laws since I have already written extensively about copyright laws. Clearly this trademark overview is designed merely to highlight some of the issues but not be exhaustive of them. The devil is in the details, as they say, and your particular matter may require a more thorough analysis of the problems and expert advice.

Understanding this body of law is important both from the point of view of creating your own rights as well as refraining from infringing on other’s rights. While this may seem self-evident since clearly you do not want to get into litigation with the owner of a trademark, it is also very important since you may have obligations to other parties that relate to your claims to your mark or your use of another person’s mark. If you are either claiming a trademark or contemplating using another’s mark in some fashion, you must be aware of your potential liability to persons with whom you have contracted since in many contracts you will be making representations, warranties and indemnities about the rights to your work, whether to your book, an article you have written, a web site you have designed or own, etc. to those other parties. As a result, if you claim a mark that you do not own or you infringe upon another’s trademark, you may find that you are in breach of your contract with these other parties. Therefore, without a careful analysis, you may be find yourself in a litigation not only with a trademark owner but with some party with whom you have contracted as well.

WHAT IS A TRADEMARK?

A trademark can be a name, slogan or design or a combination of those elements that is used to identify the source of goods (or in the case of a service mark, services) and to distinguish that source from any other source providing the same or similar goods and services. For the sake of clarity, I will use only the term “trademark” even though the term service mark may otherwise be applicable.
While titles and short phrases may not be copyrightable, they may be protected by trademark if they meet the appropriate qualifications. (Read “The Protection of Book Titles”.)

The Supreme Court has also decided that, under certain limited circumstances, merely a color can be a trademark. So, for example, a particular use of color plus a unique design, type style, etc. may all be protectable under the general theories of trademark law or in some instances, the law of unfair competition. In the book publishing business, this is similar to what is known as “trade dress.” It is the look and feel of a book and may be protectable under trademark law if the trade dress has acquired a “secondary meaning” and is not purely functional. “Secondary meaning” means that the mark has become associated in the mind of the public with a particular source and that therefore use by another of the same reference may lead to confusion. As a result, there may be protectable elements under the trademark law if there is some potential confusion as to source in the mind of the public.

LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION

The purpose of trademark law is to prevent this confusion in the minds of the consuming public as to the source of the particular goods or services. The owner of a mark has spent money and effort marketing that mark and the goods and services that are identified by the mark. The purpose of all that money and marketing has been to make the mark identifiable with only those goods and services to the exclusion of other goods and services and therefore to make certain that the mark is identified with only that owner’s goods and services. Thus, if the manner in which you may be intending to use someone’s trademark will likely cause that confusion, you may be infringing upon that mark and may be liable as a result.
However, if your use of a name, for example, is not likely to confuse the public as to either the source of the goods or services you are providing or you are not implying any endorsement from the owner of the mark, you may be free to use the name without penalty. And so merely mentioning the name “Coca Cola” in the context of this article is not likely to be a trademark violation for it is explanatory only and no one would believe that I was intending any confusion about the trademark “Coca Cola” or that somehow the company endorsed such use. The courts refer to this kind of permissible use as “nominative” because the use is not likely to cause any confusion as to source.

But as in all areas of the law, not everything is as simple at it first appears. With certain famous marks, such as “Coca Cola,” the owner of the mark may have the right to prevent the mark from being “diluted.” This means that even though no one would be confused by the use of a mark in a way that does not even remotely indicate that its use was intended to imply use by the owner or confusion as to source, the mark may still be protected against such use if such use “dilutes” the value of the mark in other ways. This right is limited to “famous” marks and in those instances, extends the doctrine of trademark protection that is otherwise restricted to uses that may result in confusion.

THE NEED FOR A NOTICE

When you encounter a descriptive word or phrase, you cannot rely on the absence of any sort of trademark symbol to determine whether or not the mark is being claimed. Someone may be claiming a mark and may be using a mark without affixing any symbol to it. This is the same issue with regard to copyrights since no notice of copyright is required in order to obtain protection. If the mark has been federally registered, it should be accompanied by a ® symbol. But not all marks will have such a symbol. Some, the ones that have not been federally registered, may bear a TM or SM after the name or logo. This means that there is someone claiming prior usage of the mark, such as in the word e-THICS (TM), or the phrase “Lawyering With Integrity”(SM), a word and phrase that I claim as trademarks.

However, registering the mark and affixing the required notice, much as registering a copyright, affords the owner some very substantial legal benefits and so registration should be actively pursued and is highly recommended. And one of the key benefits to registering a mark is that it provides for national exclusion from others using the same or similar mark after you in a confusingly similar manner. The owner of an unregistered mark is limited to using that mark only in the geographic area in which the unregistered mark is actually being used. In such an instance, the unregistered mark can be prevented by the registered mark from expanding into other territories.

Unlike rights of patent or copyright which have finite terms of duration, trademarks actually have the potential of growing more valuable as time passes. Marks can, accordingly, last indefinitely.