Yankees continue battle over 'The House that Juice Built' trademark

As if the New York Yankees don't have enough to deal with — injuries, contract talks and getting under the luxury tax limit — the team is still battling a Long Island man over a trademark slogan — for the fourth straight year!

The dispute between Steve Lore and the team's pinstriped lawyers is over his trademark application for the phrase "The House that Juice Built," reports The New York Post.

Lore's slogan is a twisted word play on the team's trademarked phrase for Yankee Stadium, "The House that Ruth Built." Lore's version also alters the team logo from an Uncle Sam-style hat over a baseball bat to the hat with the bat being replaced by a syringe.

It sounds like this house hits too close to home.

The Yankees slammed the trademark application as "offensive" and understood the word "juice" to be a reference to "consumption of alcohol or illegal anabolic steroids."

The Brooklyn-born Lore, a lifelong Dodgers fan, applied for the trademark in 2009 as an anti-steroid message.

"This is about wanting to control people," said Lore. "They don't want to be held responsible for not overseeing their own players.

"Steroids really ruined the game, and when news of [the rampant use] broke, it was mostly of Yankees that were suspected — Giambi, A-Rod, Clemens," he explained.

The case has lingered before the US Patent and Trademark Office even long before the Core Four was whittled down to the Key Three and has been suspended to allow the two parties to negotiate between themselves.

"They are dragging this on because they don't have a case," claims Lore.

The Yankees have not commented.