When it comes to trademark lawsuits, the best defense is a good offense, Barstool Sports says

Our own Barstool Sports is suing a California company that claims it holds a trademark on the phrase "Back to Back World War Champs" before that company can sue Barstool.

Quintal International applied for a trademark on the phrase in 2013 and says Barstool's use of it on T-shirts is a violation for which Barstool owes lots of money and that if it doesn't pay up, Quintal will sue.

That's a complete smokescreen, our local self-described "satirical sports and men’s lifestyle blog" says, because it first started selling T-shirts with the phrase in 2012. In its suit, filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Barstool seeks to have a judge to order the cancellation of Quintal's trademark.

Barstool is the second company to file a preemptive federal lawsuit against Quintal. In a suit filed in March in US District Court in Fort Worth, Texas, Sheep Dog Market says Quintal should never have been awarded a trademark on the phrase, because it's been in use for years:

At issue is the ability of vendors to sell t-shirts and other goods which bear a common phrase, in this case, "BACK TO BACK WORLD WAR CHAMPS," which has been used ornamentally on clothing as a patriotic slogan for many years, long before Quintal registered it with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in mid-2013. ...

It is expected that during discovery, Quintal will be forced to admit that it has sent similar threatening letters to a large number of t-shirt vendors, and brow-beaten many of them into giving up their sales of the shirts or lose online third-party sales channels such as Zazzle, which do not want to get involved in a trademark dispute and be accused of contributing to infringement.

Quintal has yet to respond to either lawsuit.