Cougars Mark Their Territory WSU Enforcing Trademark Rights
The Cougars are growling a little.
After years of lax enforcement, Washington State University is clamping down on the use of its trademarked name and the Cougars’ team logo.
“You know how creative students and fans can get. If you don’t control it (a school’s image), you can get a lot of use that is, uh, just not appropriate,” said Dick Rademaker, head of a company that markets and guards college trademarks.
Licensing college names and logos is a $3 billion business in the United States, with schools typically netting 7.5 percent of that figure.
“It comes out to a pretty sizable chunk of revenue,” said Rademaker, chief executive officer of Licensing Resources Group Inc.
Depending on the school, there may be dozens or even hundreds of college-licensed products. Schools offer shirts, hats, glasses, coasters - even, for die-hard alumni, caskets.
“If you want to go to eternity in your Alabama casket, you can,” said Rademaker.
But as every year’s Apple Cup football face-off between WSU and its archrival, the University of Washington, demonstrates, there are plenty of people stamping out unlicensed goods.
To rein in the lawbreakers, WSU in recent weeks has:
Hired Rademaker’s company.
Boosted licensing fees from 6.5 percent of wholesale cost to 7.5 percent.
Confiscated about 200 illegal T-shirts.
“Maybe I’m conservative, but I don’t think we want to be associated with this sort of thing,” said Steve Schauble, who oversees WSU’s trademark licensing program. He hauled out a shirt with a sexual reference to the University of Washington team. Other shirts contain double-entendres targeting opposing teams. The University of Southern California team, for example, is nicknamed the Trojans. Trojan is also a well-known brand of condoms.
“Obviously, I can’t give these shirts to charity,” Schauble said. “I have to burn them.”
WSU has trademarked 12 phrases and logos, including “Washington State University,” “WSU Cougars,” “WAZZU” and “Cougs.” In some cases, it even will fight uses that imply the university, such as “Washington State” printed in the school colors.
“There is some interpretation involved. Some people this week tried to test where that line is,” said Schauble.
“It isn’t fun to take stuff from people,” he said. “We just need to draw the line on what’s acceptable and what’s not.”
The changes surprised some local screen printers, who say WSU’s trademarks rarely were policed before.
“It (illegal use of trademarks) is a big problem in our industry,” said June Lipe, who runs Triticum Press, a screen-printing shop in Pullman.
But in the past, she said, printers have used their own judgment as to what violates a trademark.
Now, “they’re requiring us to submit every design that has their logo, which is 90 percent of our work,” she said.
The system will work if the university tells students not to try using the logo illegally, she said.
“The thing I don’t want to do is be an enforcer,” Lipe said. “We’re screen printers; we’re not cops.”
Schauble said WSU tightened up its trademarks for three reasons: to protect its image, raise more money and protect the interests of companies that play by the rules.
The university won’t license cigarette lighters, guns or knives for fear of liability. Although the athletic department allows beer companies to sponsor events, Schauble says the school won’t lend its logo or trademarks to makers of alcohol.
WSU will pay Licensing Resources Group Inc. about $37,000 per year, Schauble said. Most of the profits from trademark licensing - about $175,000 in a typical year - provide scholarships for women athletes, whose sports don’t raise as much revenue as men’s events do.
Rademaker predicted that the market for college-licensed goods will only increase. Some schools - including WSU have begun licensing bottled water. Others have their own brands of salsa and potato chips.
“We even have had requests for condoms with school logos,” Rademaker said. “I don’t know of any school that permits that.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo