Jamie and Rebekah Vardy have failed in their bid to trade mark the phrase ‘Chat s***, get banged’ in relation to popular culture, such as songs, reports have revealed.
The 32-year-old footballer famously used the phrase in a Facebook post in 2011, but it only resurfaced and was popularised during Leicester City’s miracle title campaign in 2016.
The phrase has since become synonymous with Mr Vardy, and is used frequently across social media and in popular culture.
Although the words are largely associated with the footballer, the phrase has now been adopted by musicians Ed Sheeran and Stormzy in their new hit song, Take Me Back to London.
Mr and Mrs Vardy applied to the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to have the phrase trade marked in relation to popular culture, which would allow the couple to commercially exploit the expression every time it was used in music or on other products and services.
Handing down its ruling, however, the IPO said it could not trade mark the phrase for songs or popular culture. However, it has allowed Vardy to trade mark its use on T-shirts, beer, spirits and other promotional materials.
Speaking to the Sun newspaper, a source close to the couple said: “Jamie and Becky initially joked they should trade mark the phrase after it became a huge thing online when his old posts began to reappear.
“Then when they looked into it, it actually made a lot of business sense. Sadly, the IPO would not allow them to protect its use in songs or popular culture because it has a swear word in it. But they OK’d it for use on T-shirts and the like.”
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