The Washington Post reports that a Virginia man named Martin McCaulay and his company, Washington Warriors LLC, have applied to federally register dozens of trademarks for possible new names for the Washington Redskins football team, such as the Washington AMERICANS, BRAVEHEARTS, FEDERALS, FORCES, FOUNDERS, GENERALS, GLADIATORS, MONUMENTS, NATIVES, PANDAS, RED-TAILED HAWKS, TRIBE, VETERANS, and WARRIORS. According to the article, McCaulay’s hope is that if the team changes its name as a result of the cancellation of the REDSKINS trademarks and the surrounding controversy (see prior posts on the subject here, here, here, here, here, and here), one of his applied-for names will appeal to the team’s owner, and the team will pay handsomely to obtain the rights to it. This strategy, known as trademark squatting, is considerably more difficult than the related practice of cyberquatting, which basically only requires the purchase of an Internet domain name that trades on the goodwill of another person, business, or entity. Because trademark registration in the U.S. requires actual use of the mark in commerce in connection with all of the goods/services recited in the application, trademark squatting can be a substantial undertaking. McCaulay is reported to have already spent more than $20,000 on his efforts to register the names, and has had to create and sell merchandise bearing the fictional team names in order to prove use of the marks. While McCaulay has successfully registered at least six of the fictional team names to date, it remains to be seen whether his expensive gamble will pay off with the real team—and its real team of lawyers. Read the full article here. Reposted from The Washington Post.