Dale Earnhardt Jr. Clears Air with Ravens' Lamar Jackson

In the quiet part of the offseason between free agency and the NFL Draft, the Baltimore Ravens and their superstar quarterback, Lamar Jackson, found themselves in intriguing headlines. NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr recently filed to trademark his classic italic No. 8 that graced the side of his car for the majority of his career while he raced for Dale Earnhardt Incorporated.

Earnhardt's step-mother, Teresa, held the trademark over the italic No. 8 through trademark rights, but the rights to the trademark expired. Earnhardt Jr. and his team quickly jumped on the opportunity to buy the rights to the trademark - this is where the Lamar Jackson comes in.

While not holding the rights to the italic No. 8, Earnhardt Jr. and Junior Motorsports designed a different style for the number, which they eventually did file to trademark while also in the process of trying to trademark the classic italic No. 8 - that's when all the confusion began between the former racecar driver and the two-time MVP. However, as Earnhardt Jr. himself explained on his podcast, it was all a big misunderstanding.

"The eight situation with Lamar Jackson," Earnhardt Jr said. "To kind of give a timeline, if you will. So we learned that the Budweiser No. 8 trademark is not going to be continued by Teresa [Earnhardt]. I haven't talked to Teresa, I don't know why that was her decision, but we saw an opportunity to pick up the number and see if we can get the trademark. Without the trademark, we can run the number. Anyone can. We can use the number no problem. Did we have a trademark for the current No. 8 Junior Motorsports number that we've been running since 2019? No, there was no trademark for that number. So we field for the Bud eight trademark. We have succeeded in that process, and as a backup plan, we filed for the trademark on the Junior Motorsports eight."

Earnhardt Jr. then explained this is where the confusion came in.

"I learned on social media about the same time as everybody else did that Lamar was contesting our trademark application," Earnhardt Jr. said. "He wasn't suing me. He's just contesting it. And there's a part of the trademark process where if you believe somebody's applying for a trademark and it's going to hurt your brand, you can oppose it and say 'I need this. I need y'all to look at thi first...' I learned that it was the Junior Motorsports [eight] and we weren't ever going to use that again... so yeah, it's a non-issue."

So, for all intents and purposes, this was blown out of proportion and both sides appear to be on good terms.