I understand the pressure to change from less repugnant nicknames for a
University . A friend of mine Richard Lapchick lobbied successfully for
his alma mater, St. Johns (NY) to change from the Red Men to the "Red
Storm." Another Native American change I remember involved Eastern
Michigan University. Needless to say, I appreciate the desire to switch to
a less offensive moniker(said with a long "O" sound for our Canadian
friends). The switch, however, creates a potential legal heartache for
the University involved.
University officials encourage alumni, students and donors (formerly
referred to as "boosters") to submit potential nickname changes. Each
group votes, then announces what the final selection-- to much fanfare.
Sometimes people selecting new names for goods, services or even nicknames
fail to actually seek prior if anyone holds a prior claim to the name for
that good, service or category.
Trademarks and Copyrights protect such things from occurring. Secretary of
State Officials and the US Patent & Trademark Office classifies Trademarks
in certain categories. The Offices, however, do award the same name for
Trademarks in Multiple Categories for non-competing unique name products.
For example, an arbitrary example of Trademark usage in multiple classes
might be Cadillac for Luxury Cars and Cadillac for Dog Food each owned by
completely different businesses.
The standard of review for products in potentially similar classes of goods
is the following: Can the goods or service be considered confusingly
similar as to the origin or source of them. Ultimately, you wish to create
a coined original name unique to all previous others. Or you wish for the
exact other extreme -- commonalty to prove the mark is Generic and not
unique to identifying the source of one maker. (As an aside, this is why
you see the Rollerblade company cringe when someone refers to In-Line
skating as "Rollerblading" or Kimberly-Clark's concern that we call any
facial tissue a "Kleenex" ).
Miami University possesses such problems. While some names may work better
than others, some may not be available as someone else owns them in a
particular class of goods Miami seeks for usage.
Universities often seek International Class 25 for their goods, namely
Clothing. Once they register the Trademark federally, internationally or
on a state level, they then can license the goods out to manufacturers who
each pay an annual minimum plus a royalty ranging from 7-10% of the net
wholesale price of the goods. Many universities hold agreements with up to
300 licensees. Each churns money into the university anytime someone buys
a Licensed Product. This explains why Universities love to "update" their
color schemes, uniform designs, etc... to sell more product. (I wanted to
say "Cha Ching", but someone already owns the Trademark to it as a spoken
word).
If Miami selects Red Hawks they may find the University of Utah standing in
the way. The University of Utah presently holds a state registration for
the Trademark for Class 25 Goods. While Miami may state they never do
business in Utah (or compete), I think of the possibility of their
basketball teams playing in an NC$$ regional in Salt Lake or Ogden.
More often then not, these things get settled before lawyers get new BMW's,
but it can happen even to $50 million campaigns (Remember Coke's launch of
Surge @ this year's Super Bowl that they settled out of court with two
companies prior to the big launch).
While I see less problems initially with potentially less desirable names
such as War Hawks, Thunder Hawks or Red Arrows, a possible explanation to
their movement away from their initial announcement might be because they
failed to run a Trademark search on the availability of the mark.
Gee, I never thought I would incorporate my career work in a hockey-l
discussion list.
Hmmmm...wonder who owns the Trademark Registration for "Clutch & Grab"?
--John.
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