The marks in this case are near identical, the differences to the extent they exist are subtle at best,” said Greg Latham, an IP attorney representing Tigeraire. “A person whether it’s a judge or a juror will look at these and find they are confusingly similar.”
He was shocked when a company called Sun Day Red – a company directly affiliated with superstar golfer Tiger Woods – released a logo nearly identical to Tigeraire’s.
It appears as though a company with the sophistication of TaylorMade, the company that owns Sun Day Red. And obviously the sophistication of the companies operating under the Tiger Woods brand would have done a search to identify problematic pre-existing marks.”
Founder and CEO of Tigeraire Jack Karavich started the company in 2020 – four years before Sun Day Red. It was originally a company that specified in air ventilation for football helmets. Allowing players to stay cool and breathe easier.But Karavich says once the company saw the potential to expand – it did.”Football is a very small market. It’s about a 5 million total addressable market is what it’s called. 5 million people globally play football,” said Karavich. “And golf, you’re looking at around 70-80 million globally that play golf. So, it’s a bigger market opportunity, bigger chance to grow.”Karavich says the company began marketing its products for the sport at a variety of high-profile golf events starting in 2023. But since Sun Day Red has burst onto the scene with its debut announcement in February of this year… it’s been tough for his company’s logo to stand out… without any confusion that is.”Everyone would just come up and ask us where we got it from. They thought it was so cool that we had the Sun Day Red gear and we had to explain to them that no actually this is not Sun Day Red this is Tigeraire. It was really just the same theme over and over again.”After months of dealing with this, Tigeraire had enough.
The company took legal action – filing a notice of opposition to the Sun Day Red logo.But Sun Day Red fired back – filing suit claiming the Baton Rouge business Tigeraire is trying to extract – “unwarranted financial windfall from a larger and more successful brand.”“I mean it’s the reality is it’s dirty tactics in the legal space,” said Karavich. “They’re trying to create this false narrative that we’re out to get money from them, that this is a money grab. When in reality, they had these conversations with us in the past. They even pushed us earlier this year, said hey, you guys entered this space after Sun Day Red launched, and we said no.”We have reached out to the attorneys representing Sun Day Red according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filing but have not yet received a reply.A marketing representative from Sun Day Red replied with, “no comment,” and said that everything could be seen in the legal filing.
