The same situation occurs with the Olympics. The IOC sues entities not because they are worried that someone is going to get confused about their brand but so they can charge those entities for using it in their promotions.
Worth remembering it's tort not crime.
[Not that you're saying it's criminal, just that sometimes illegal is taken to mean criminal whilst torts and such are described instead as unlawful.]
I don't think there's a large moral component to the respective use of each word, it's more of a mathematical concept. That said, odds are "DON'T DO THAT" is usually going to have a stronger moral force behind it than "YOU CAN ONLY DO IT THIS WAY" since people can come up with creative situations that weren't thought of at the time the law was written, and of course it varies based on the situation (people will probably be more pissy if you handle nuclear material in an unlawful way than if you jaywalk for instance).
"Since the Sydney Games in 2000, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has required bidding governments to commit to introducing bespoke legislation to offer a further layer of legal sanction." http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/apr/13/olympics-2012-b...
"Expressions likely to be considered a breach of the rules would include any two of the following list: "Games, Two Thousand and Twelve, 2012, Twenty-Twelve". Using one of those words with London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver or bronze is another likely breach."
It's not 'possibility' it's 'likelihood' of confusion that is considered, amongst other factors - eg http://www3.ce9.uscourts.gov/jury-instructions/node/244.
The NFL own the RTM (eg serial number 78688906, 77182909, 76572704) and they use it to sell merchandise, TV broadcasts, and clothing respectively. The problem they face is that bowl is a generic term for a [sports] competition (cf http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bowl), and super is also standard language. You can't use trademarks to prevent a person describing something. Moreover when I say "buy my beer to drink whilst you watch the Super Bowl" I'm not using the trademark, I'm using a description of a sports event. If I said "buy my beer to drink whilst you wear your Super Bowl t-shirt" [assuming the owners have registered the mark for clothing] then I'm using the trademark, but I'm still using it to describe the TM owners goods, quite clearly, and so there's no confusion.
Clearly one could create confusion: "drink our Super Bowl beer" uses the term as if it were a trademark, and moreover as if it were the advertisers trademark.
Isn't "super bowl" just a description of a large sports event ; that would seems to lack the distinctiveness normally required of a trademark for anything that's normally related to sports events. The 2 live marks incorporating "super bowl" would make it appear the the USPTO consider use of the term separate to the NFL's mark as allowable [but I'm not sure they've been properly examined as yet].
I used "possibility" deliberately. "Likelihood of confusion" is a factor in the legal test for trademark infringement (and generally the most important one). But the mere possibility of confusion might be enough to get a retailer to steer clear of a trademark as a practical rather than legal matter.
I think you would also have a difficult time convincing a judge you were not talking about the NFL championship. Application of the law is rarely a "check the dictionary, guys, he's technically correct" thing. Especially when it comes to things like trademark violations (where it's about confusion to the general public)
You don't need to. Trademark law doesn't prevent you from referring to people's products, nor their origin, it prevents you from selling your own products as if they were someone else's. The judge doesn't care [shouldn't!] that you're referring to the NFL Super Bowl TM - their concern is whether you're suggesting your product comes from the company that own the Super Bowl trademark (for a limited set of products).
Not even an imbecile would think that "buy X to use whilst you do Y" means that the people selling X own Y. "Buy our gloves for your skiing trip to France" - oh clearly that company owns France /s.
It's not about confusion of the general public, it's removed from that. Even if you can show that there is no actual confusion (surveys or whatnot) the judge can still decide there is a likelihood of it (and vice versa).
Isn't "super bowl" just a description of a large sports event ; that would seems to lack the distinctiveness normally required of a trademark for anything that's normally related to sports events.
But registration is prima facie evidence of validity. Quoting 15 USC 1507(b):
A certificate of registration of a mark upon the principal register provided by this Act shall be prima facie evidence of the validity of the registered mark and of the registration of the mark, of the registrant's ownership of the mark, and of the registrant's exclusive right to use the registered mark in commerce on or in connection with the goods or services specified in the certificate, subject to any conditions or limitations stated in the certificate.
What I was trying to intimate was that someone with big enough cajones could challenge the validity of the mark as being merely descriptive of some goods (TV broadcasts, say) rather than being a proper indicator of origin of goods/services.
ref: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=0882283, http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=0846056 are some of the early registrations - NFL do appear to have seen off several other registrations and uses to the term "super bowl" (superbol, soul bowl, superbowlz, ...) in court however.