The T&T se­nior na­tion­al foot­ball team will head in­to the fi­nal round of the World Cup qual­i­fiers or pos­si­bly the FI­FA World Cup next year with a new name.

Known as ‘The So­ca War­riors’ around the world for the last 27 years, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion was forced to seek a name change due to a break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions with vet­er­an sports com­men­ta­tor Sel­wyn Melville, who owns the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty (IP) trade­mark and is cred­it­ed with coin­ing the phrase ‘So­ca War­riors’ in 1998.

Melville filed a le­gal suit for the use of the ‘So­ca War­riors’ name af­ter he re­ject­ed the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion’s of­fer of be­tween TT$1.5 to and $2 mil­lion for the right to the name. He de­scribed the TTFA of­fer via a Zoom call in May as ridicu­lous, and even jok­ing­ly said his le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive said, ‘that amount can­not even buy a Ti­i­da car.’

Melville told Guardian Me­dia Sports on Thurs­day that he want­ed a five-year deal, but he re­fused to di­vulge the amount in­volved.

In­for­ma­tion reach­ing Guardian Me­dia was that Melville’s ask­ing price was a hefty $15 mil­lion over a five years, while al­so lim­it­ing the TTFA’s use of the name.

Ac­cord­ing to the source close to the ne­go­ti­a­tions, the use of the name by the TTFA was lim­it­ed on­ly to brand­ing and the nam­ing of the team. Fol­low­ing a failed at­tempt at a sale of the trade­mark to the TTFA for US$30 mil­lion in 2017, Melville has since moved on to re­ceive the trade­mark cer­tifi­cate for the term So­ca War­riors in 2022.

In 1998, Melville coined the nick­name So­ca War­riors’ while cov­er­ing a TT men’s team en­counter against El Sal­vador in the Unit­ed States. The team was al­so called So­ca War­riors dur­ing their suc­cess­ful 2006 FI­FA World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign, while so­ca artiste Max­imus Dan (now MX Prime) re­leased a song called Fight­er, that was ded­i­cat­ed to the squad.

When con­tact­ed, Melville said he was asked to give up his rights, though there are le­gal im­pli­ca­tions that the TTFA and the coun­try are un­aware of. They made an ap­proach to me about some­thing, and I didn’t give them a pos­i­tive an­swer on that be­cause it was ridicu­lous. I was sup­posed to give up my trade­mark to please oth­er peo­ple, and they gave me a price to go home with. But you work hard to have your trade­mark, and every­thing done, and you can­not sell a trade­mark, you can­not, so it’s now an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them, if they’re in­ter­est­ed, to sit down and ne­go­ti­ate,” Melville said on Thurs­day.

“We had dis­cus­sions on that al­ready, but like they de­cid­ed ‘this is what we want’, and with­out say­ing much to me, they gave me an or­der ‘this is what we want’ and you have noth­ing to do with the name again. Well, I can’t sell a trade­mark. I think what peo­ple didn’t do was sit down and go through le­gal sit­u­a­tions and un­der­stand what the im­pli­ca­tions are.”

“ Even the ra­dio sta­tions and them now, they don’t con­trol the trade­mark. They have a li­cense to use the name, and that’s what the foot­ball peo­ple don’t un­der­stand. This is not about me, but about the laws, so what­ev­er you sit down and think for your­self, you have to sit down and think about what the le­gal im­pli­ca­tions are in the coun­try.”

This de­vel­op­ment brings an end to more than two decades of us­ing a name that the T&T foot­ball team has been brand­ed by. For­mer So­ca War­riors goal­keep­er Kelvin Jack, up­on hear­ing the de­vel­op­ment, de­scribed it as sad and non­sen­si­cal.

Jack said he didn’t ex­pect the name change to af­fect the per­for­mance of the team ahead of the fi­nal round of qual­i­fiers but said it would af­fect the tra­di­tion, say­ing, “ The So­ca War­riors is known all over the world, that’s our name.”

On Wednes­day, the TTFA be­gan a re­brand­ing process by which the pub­lic and oth­er cor­po­rate cit­i­zens are be­ing so­licit­ed to come up with names to call the T&T foot­ball team. Ac­cord­ing to the TTFA source, names such as Red Army, Ca­lyp­so Kings and Car­ni­val Kings have been sug­gest­ed, but they will await more names over the com­ing week.

It is un­der­stood that with­in the next two weeks, a new name will be an­nounced.

A Se­nior Lec­tur­er of the Fac­ul­ty of Law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Justin Koo, who has been fol­low­ing the de­vel­op­ment, said yes­ter­day, “It is very im­por­tant to see what the trade­mark is reg­is­tered for be­cause that dic­tates what rights he has. A quick trade­mark les­son here, trade­marks are on­ly valid for goods and ser­vices for which the mark is reg­is­tered. So he has reg­is­tered it for sev­er­al goods and ser­vices, but the most im­por­tant one here is un­der Class 25, where he has it for t-shirts and po­lo shirts. He al­so has it un­der a num­ber of cat­e­gories.”

“So, I think it re­al­ly de­pends on what the TTFA wants to use the name for, be­cause one of the big gaps he has is that un­der Class 41, which is for things like sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and cul­tur­al events and things like that, he does not have sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties as part of the reg­is­tra­tion. What he has un­der 41 is scu­ba div­ing.”

“So, the broad ques­tion here is what the TTFA is go­ing to do with the trade­mark is go­ing to be the is­sue. So, if they want to re­fer to the team as So­ca War­riors, the trade­mark that Melville has does not stop the TTFA from de­scrip­tive­ly re­fer­ring to the team as So­ca War­riors, and it does not stop any­one in the pub­lic from re­fer­ring to the team as So­ca War­riors, be­cause it is for de­scrip­tive use.”