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. HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.