Lamar Jackson's suing someone over the number eight again.
The Baltimore Ravens quarterback is still currently in the midst of a dispute with Troy Aikman over the Hall of Fame quarterback wanting to use "EIGHT" in branding on apparel and bag. On one hand, that lawsuit seems frivolous, as Aikman wore the number first, but at least there's some potential merit as both competed in the same sport.
Maybe — and the keyword is definitely maybe — Jackson had a point when his lawyer said that Aikman's products were "likely to cause confusion, or cause mistake, or to deceive" the purchasing public whether they're buying products from Jackson or Aikman's company." Maybe. Like, a very tentative, maybe. The most tentative, maybe.
But now Jackson's at it again, suing former NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the same thing. Earnhardt has a pending trademark claim on the stylized No. 8 that he used to drive at Dale Earnhardt Incorporated and that he is now using on the No. 8 NASCAR Xfinity Series car that he owns, which is driven by Sammy Smith.
Earnhardt isn't new to controversy over the No. 8, though.
Dale Jr.'s long-time connection to the No. 8
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. made his NASCAR Cup Series debut in 1999, it was in the No. 8 car for DEI, his father's team. He'd go on to drive that car until the end of the 2007 season, when Dale Jr. would move on to Hendrick Motorsports, where he took over the No. 88 car. The stylized No. 8 stayed with Theresa Earnhardt, the widow of the late Dale Earnhardt Sr.
It would be years before Dale Jr. was able to get the No. 8 back. Even after DEI shut down its racing operation, the remnants of the team held onto the trademark for the number. Getting into the controversy behind that would be a whole other article, but suffice it to say, the NASCAR fandom does not look kindly on what they viewed as Theresa keeping the No. 8 away from her stepson.
But things change. DEI let the trademark lapse in 2024 and Dale Jr. picked it up. He ran a late-model race in the No. 8 at Florence Motor Speedway last November, then announced Smith would use the stylized number on his Xfinity Series car this year.
The drama all seemed to be over. The specific No. 8 from the DEI days belonged to the rightful owner, the driver who made the number famous, who won the Daytona 500 in it, who carried on the legacy of the Earnhardt name after his father's sudden death on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
But now Lamar Jackson's going after the number. It seems like a lawsuit that's unlikely to go anywhere, but I'm not a legal expert. Maybe Jackson's trademark is so all encompassing that it will stop Dale Earnhardt Jr. from using the number, though it seems odd since it's not like Junior hadn't already been using the No. 8 for his Xfinity Series team. It wasn't the DEI stylized version, but it was still the same number.
Maybe someone out there will see a Sammy Smith diecast car and get confused. Maybe they'll say "wow, a Lamar Jackson car," and then they'll get home with it, do some Googling and realize it is not, in fact, a Lamar Jackson car.
But there are a lot of maybes here. Maybe the best thing would be if this lawsuit simply never happened in the first place.
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