by Katie Moore / Eyewitness News
NEW ORLEANS — The battle over who owns the phrase “Who Dat” is already in court, and several merchandisers in the metro area received letters saying they are required to pay licensing fees to the company Who Dat?, Inc. to sell anything with the phrase printed on it.
Who Dat?, Inc. maintains that they’ve been licensing the phrase since the 1980s, and it’s their intellectual property.
“In 1983, we got excited and wrote a song,” said Steve Monistere about how they ended up registering a trademark of ‘Who Dat?” that same year.
No one denies that Sal and Steve Monistere and Carlo Nuccio wrote a version of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” performed by Aaron Neville, with the “Who Dat” chant in the song.
But the issue is not who owns the song, but who owns the phrase “Who Dat.”
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