This is where I would be interested in getting a lawyer to weigh in on this. Can the WPA trademark the world championship for every pool game? Would they be deemed as separate trademarks? If I created my own pool game, would they then hold the trademark to that world championship as well?I'm not a lawyer but I do know that if a company does not protect its trademark then it can lose the right to do so. For instance, many years ago I had a product called LubeStar. After about a year we were contacted by Texaco saying that they are known as "The star of the American road" and our use of Star was an infringement (or whatever the legal term is). Instead of going to court they offered us $6000 to change the name. We did so pretty quickly. Our next products were IBN and Appel products,
The point is that if WPA ignores Charlie and the straight pool event actually becomes something huge then WPA might have lost the ability to profit from it because they didn't protect their sanctioning rights early on.
If they are separate trademarks, I did find this on the web.
"You can lose a mark through abandonment. A mark will be considered abandoned if you stop using it for three consecutive years and you have no intent to resume its use."
I would think that the 14.1 title would qualify as abandoned at this time. But as I said, I would be interested in hearing a lawyer's perspective. Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding everything.