This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

So years ago I was talking to John Marr. He's the guy who first uttered this bedrock 99PI mantra.

Always rate the plaque. And we were talking about the show and he said,

you know what you should do a story about. It's one of my favorite places in San Francisco.

So I went to the address and I checked it out. And I kid you not. He sent me to a gas station

on Van S Avenue in San Francisco. He told me to look around and discover what was weird about it.

In almost every respect, it's a normal chevron gas station. It has a blue awning

and the red and blue chevron logo on the sign. But the sign in awning don't say chevron,

they say, standard. As in standard oil, the massive oil monopoly broken up in the early 20th century

by the Sherman Antitrust Act. One of the independent companies created by that breakup was chevron.

And for some reason, even though this gas station is a modern chevron station in every way,

it's called standard. If you call the station, they will answer the phone saying chevron,

and the attendant cannot tell you why it's a standard on the sign. I've tried. But a trademark

lawyer like Amanda Levandowski can. A trademark can be any word name symbol device used by someone

who has the keyword here is bonafide intent to use the mark in commerce. And they're using that

word symbol device to identify the source of their goods or services. That phrase bonafide intent

means that if you want to keep a trademark, you have to use it. In this particular case,

when standard oil was busted up, the standard oil trademark still retained a lot of goodwill in

value. And if for whatever reason down the line chevron wants to take advantage of that value,

the name standard has to be used. And it has to be used in connection with whatever the underlying

goods or services are. So they couldn't just print pamphlets that occasionally used mixed chevron

standard branding and say that they were still using it for oil and gas. They have to prominently

...