Colleges Win Suit Against T-Shirt Manufacturer
FEDERAL COURT HOLDS THAT SCHOOL COLORS ARE PROTECTED UNDER TRADEMARK ACT
Smack Apparel Company (Smack), a manufacturer of printed shirts, produced several types of shirts related to the 2004 Sugar Bowl and the national football championships won by Southern Cal and Ohio State. The specific shirts Smack produced were:
+ A purple and gold color shirt with "Beat Oklahoma!" on the front, and, on the back, "Bring It Back to the Bayou!" and "National Champions."
+ A purple and gold color shirt with the words "2003 College Football National Champions" on the front and "Sweet As Sugar" on the back.
+ A crimson and crème color shirt and the words "BOUrbon Street or Bust" on the front and "Show Us YOUr Beads" and "Sweet As Sugar" on the back.
+ A crimson and crème color shirt with "Let’s Make It Eight!" on the front, and "Beat Socal!" on the back
+ A scarlet and gray shirt that read on the front "Got Seven?" and, on the back, "We Do! 7 Time National Champions!" with a map of the state of Ohio with a star indicating the city of Columbus.
+ A cardinal and gold shirt that read on the front "Got Eight?" and, on the back, "We Do! 8 Time National Champions!" with a map of California and a star indicating "SoCal".
Louisiana State University (LSU), the University of Oklahoma (OU), Ohio State University (OSU), the University of Southern California (USC), and the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC)–the official sports licensing arm for member institutions of the NCAA–became aware of the shirts through their marketing by vendors near campus on game days and in New Orleans immediately prior to the 2004 Sugar Bowl.
LSU joined with the three other schools and the CLC to sue Smack, claiming that the shirts violated the respective schools’ trademarks because Smack never obtained a license from CLC to manufacture and market the shirts. The universities alleged that even though the shirts did not specifically and explicitly mention the universities or their mascots–the Tigers, the Sooners, the Buckeyes, or the Trojans–the shirts utilized the schools’ official colors to give consumers the false impression that they were shirts that were officially sanctioned by those schools and to capitalize on the time, effort, and money that the universities spent on developing a well-known color scheme.
The federal Lanham Act governs the use of trademarks in the United States. A trademark, which can take the form of words or symbols, grants the trademark’s owner the exclusive right to use such words or symbols to designate a particular good or service. A trademark, in short, is an adjective which designates the origin or source of a good or service.
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