Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles has once again been forced to dig into his law background to defend one of the Speedway’s most precious trademarks – one that has been twice infringed upon by IndyCar’s two primary U.S. racing competitors in the last week.

The latest caps a trio of seemingly blatant instances over the last year of Formula 1 and Liberty Media flirting dangerously close with the five-word phrase that is so thoroughly ingrained in the pageantry of the 500 – and which was first trademarked by Hulman and Company in 1986: “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

In an advertisement for the upcoming F1 season on ESPN’s SportsCenter on Saturday, an announcer's voice can be heard in the background calling the racing series “the greatest spectacle in motorsports.” The potential trademark infringement follows F1’s Miami Grand Prix last May when LL Cool J, in kicking off the in-person driver introductions, said, “Let me introduce you to the 20 best drivers in the world. This is the greatest spectacle in motorsports. This is Formula 1.”

Days later, Penske Entertainment Corp. president and CEO Mark Miles called it “a crock of (expletive.)”

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The music artist’s scripted remarks came two months after the social media account promoting F1’s then-upcoming Las Vegas Grand Prix touted the future event to be “the greatest racing spectacle on the planet” and noted the event would be taking place in the “sports and entertainment capital of the world” – a riff off IMS’s trademark of the “Racing Capital of the World.”

Last spring, Boles told IndyStar that Liberty Media officials had been apologetic around the Vegas promotional incident and said, “We get it. We won’t do it,” and told IMS officials they would delete the offending social media posts. “They couldn’t have been more gracious, saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ve got it, no problem,” Boles said of the pair’s March interaction.

After Miami, Miles, though clearly frustrated, insisted he didn’t believe the offense came from F1 and Liberty Media’s upper ranks. “I didn’t consider it a corporate policy, given our relationship,” he said. “But I don’t expect (the potential trademark infringements) to continue. We had a little conversation with them when it was popping up around Vegas, and it was very informal and quick, so I was surprised by (Miami).”

In a statement provided to IndyStar regarding this latest infringement, Boles stopped short of promising to send Liberty Media and its partners a cease-and-desist letter, but the track president’s patience has clearly reached its limit.

“We are aware of the use of our mark in what appears to be a broadcast promotional spot. We will once again address it with the appropriate people and are prepared to take every measure possible to protect our brand’s intellectual property,” Boles said in the statement.

“It continues to be disappointing that others can’t create their own brand identity without infringing upon ours.”

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Saturday morning’s gaffe by F1 came less than four days after NASCAR’s social media team posted a video of Monday’s Daytona 500 to the series’ official Threads account with a direct infringing tagline: “The greatest spectacle in racing.” The post was removed before the end of the race, even before anyone from Penske Entertainment reached out to the rival series to ask for it to be removed.

That post had Boles far less enraged, given NASCAR’s quick and proactive remedy.

“We speculated that it wasn’t malicious. In fact, we wondered if they might’ve had an intern doing social who forgot that they’re ‘The Great American Race’ and not ‘The Greatest Spectacle in Racing’ and it was an honest mistake,” Boles told IndyStar on Friday regarding the NASCAR incident. “I had a great conversation with (NASCAR president) Steve Phelps (recently) in the Daytona airport, and he says nothing but positive things about the way we all work together.

“So it feels to me that was an honest mistake. But if they’d kept it up, we absolutely would’ve had a conversation.”

The firm response should come as no surprise as F1 continues to gain traction and build its American fanbase. But to those who see Boles’ actions as a trivial defense of words that don’t (in F1’s case) directly mirror Penske Entertainment’s trademarks, the track president says properly defending themselves against major competitors such as Liberty Media amounts to nearly a full-time job for the company’s lawyers.

“You have to enforce it every single time,” he said. “Sometimes people give us a hard time when we shut down a mom-and-pop company, but if you don’t shut (them) down, and someone like F1 does this, then you have no standing to shut them down.

“But it’s harder these days. You didn’t use to have all these different mediums. The amount of cease-and-desist notes we have to send people on Etsy who’re trying to sell Indianapolis 500 merchandise that they’re not licensed to sell, it’s a full-time job. But we’re required to, if we want to protect our own mark. It’s just the way the law works.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IMS upset over F1's infringements of 'Greatest Spectacle in Racing'