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Nasir and Matt talk about the trademark filing surrounding Johnny Manziel and Texas AaM. They also answer the question, "Can I put anything in my contracts that prevents my customers from leaving a negative Yelp review?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And this is our podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to our podcast at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We always have to slow that down for everyone. I feel like, if I say it too fast, no one’s going to get it. MATT: You know, you always bring up the part where we introduce ourselves at the beginning and you always say it’s kind of redundant. I never even really thought about it but I was listening to an episode this morning. NASIR: Is that the first episode you listened to? MATT: It was and it was literally just back to back, but I think it’s a good way to distinguish our voices so you know who is who, if you’re talking. I guess that’s the benefit of it. NASIR: That’s true. I don’t want people thinking I’m Nasir. That would confuse people. MATT: Now it’s a big mystery. We could do a video podcast and make it easier. All right, well, let’s jump into it. This is still a very relevant topic. The NFL draft happened a couple of weeks ago. One of the big stories behind that was Johnny Manziel. So, for Nasir’s sake, he was a college football player at Texas AaM, became really popular, won the Heisman as a freshman a couple of years ago and got drafted. Now, he’s going to be in the NFL – in your home state, actually – playing for Cleveland. NASIR: Nice. MATT: But the underlying story here with him is between his sort of presence and Texas AaM – or more accurately their stadium. I guess he and his long-time friend who is always in the news with him had tried to trademark “The House That Johnny Built” in order to have that affiliated with the university and I guess initially it’s been denied. I’m sure they’re still going to try to do something with that but it brings up an interesting thing because he’s wanting to trademark this and he’s wanting it to be affiliated with the university but it’s just his name but it would be tied directly into the university so it’s a couple of interlocking pieces but I can see why the registration was refused. The direct language was “consists of or includes a matter which may falsely suggest a connection with Johnny Manziel.” It’s kind of what I was hitting to. I don’t know if you had seen this at all. NASIR: Well, I first had to do a bunch of research to figure out who Johnny Manziel was and I’m still not sure, really. He’s won some kind of trophy. But it seems as though there’s the likelihood of confusion and that’s kind of interesting because, even though he’s not connected to any goods or service, he’s just a football player that they denied it which is not unusual just because they say Johnny Manziel is so famous that consumers would presume a connection. I think that statement is kind of funny because I didn’t even know who he was so I guess he wasn’t that famous to people but I suppose football consumers would recognize him. MATT: This is coming from someone who lives in Texas, by the way. I don’t know how you haven’t heard of him. I think a lot of people kind of dislike him now maybe but he is very widely discussed in any sports talk shows, all that stuff. NASIR: So, the Johnny Manziel family is not the one that tried to file this trademark. It was this Nate Fitch. Who is that? MATT: I’m just trying to go off from memory here. I believe it’s like a childhood friend, someone he’s always been in communication with and all these guys always link up with these people that try to make money off of them. If you have a childhood friend that becomes successful, you’ll see it with pretty much every professional athlete so I t...