“My goal is to ruin the logo,” Woods said when appearing with Carson Daly on the “Today Show,” joking about how he hoped to win more majors in the future. “I want to keep ruining the logo. If the trademark is this, then my job is to ruin it.”

That logo, still with its 15 stripes, is now at the centre of a trademark dispute.

On Wednesday, officials with Tigeraire, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, company that manufacturers cooling products, filed a motion of opposition with the US Patent and Trademark Office requesting Sun Day Red’s trademark application be denied.

As first reported by CNBC, Tigeraire officials contend the Sun Day Red logo “unlawfully hijacked” the design of its branding. Tigeraire’s logo also contains a leaping tiger.

“The actions of SDR, TaylorMade and Tiger Woods blatantly ignore Tigeraire’s long-standing protected mark, brand and identity, violate federal and state intellectual property law, and disregard the consumer confusion their actions create,” stated Tigeraire in the court filing.

On Thursday, Sunday Red LLC responded by filing a lawsuit in US District Court against Tigeraire, seeking, among other things, a declaration that Sun Day Red has not infringed on Tigeraire’s trademark rights and that there is no likelihood of consumer confusion between the two.

In the 24-page brief, Sun Day Red lawyers allege that Tigeraire has challenged the trademark in hopes of extracting “an unwarranted financial windfall from a larger and more successful brand based on threats of legal action and demands for exorbitant sums.”

According to Tigeraire’s website, the company was founded in 2020 with an original objective of creating “a cooler and more comfortable environment inside the helmets of the newly minted NCAA Championship football team, the LSU Tigers.” Its products incorporate small fans to offer cooling conditions inside helmets. Its consumer base eventually expanded to include industrial workers and recreational golfers, with a clip-on fan product added to its offerings.