Mustaches And Trademarks

Someone somewhere has declared that today, February 24, 2015, is NATIONAL MUSTACHE DAY. Who would have thought. There must be a day for just about anything of interest to any subset of society.

And for some reason I cannot quite understand, our Editor, Mari-Elise has informed me, "You must work up a blog entry on the interface between mustaches and trademarks." Why me? Oh well, Digging around I made some interesting findings. Indeed, a simple search through the on-line "Trademark Electronic Search System" (TESS) provided by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (the "PTO") discloses that dating back however far it it is that the PTO has listed filings on-line in TESS, there are 2,989 existing trademark registrations, and applications for registration in which the mark is described as including a "mustache" or its variant spelling, "moustache."