NY Times Article on Colleges vs. High School Logo Trademark Infringement Battles

Just thought I’d post a quick link to a New York Times article that ran today that outlines the plight of high schools across the country that are facing the legal issues of trademark infringement with the colleges and universities that they have “borrowed” for their own mascot logos. Buna High School and Penn State are mentioned very briefly in passing, but it’s resulted in an increase of searches reaching the original Buna Trademark Infringement article I posted back in June.

Colleges Tell High Schools Logos Are Off Limits

I think the bottom-line is that it’s easy to think of the big schools as the “bullies” picking on these poor little ol’ high schools who just want to have a decent mascot to showcase their school pride, but it highlights the issue of how valuable an identity can be to an organization that has invested resources, both financial and the physical effort of building a winning sports program that elevates the status of that mascot identity and how important it is to protect that investment from being trivialized by overuse by other organizations that haven’t made that same investment.

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JEB Commerce Upcoming Identity Design – Not Just a Logo

After experiencing tremendous growth and unparalleled success as a dynamic start-up in the affiliate marketing management industry, JEB Commerce – Affiliate Program Manangement realized their logo, while professional looking, was more fitting for a business in its infancy than the maturing powerhouse it was becoming and the respected leader in their industry they were aiming to attain. Even as a relatively new player, they had already amassed an impressive client list that included brands like: Elance, Ligonier Ministries, philosphy, OfficeFrog to name just a few as well as successful experience working with brands such as Dean & Deluca and Zappos.com.

After trying an online crowd-sourcing logo design solution and being less-than-impressed with the submissions, JEB Commerce decided to approach Whitestone Design Werks to come up with a design for a new logo in order to refresh and reposition their brand. What Jamie Birch, owner of JEB Commerce thought was a simple request to design a logo, turned into an education about the difference between “just a logo” and what a well-thought out and designed identity system was and how it was crucial for developing JEB Commerce’s position as not just a well-respected brand but an authoritative, leading brand in their space.

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Trademark Infringement of Mascot Logo! Texas High School Gets Mauled by Penn State

Like many high schools with little budget and no clue as to what institutes true trademark infringement, Buna High School in Buna, Texas had been “assured” by a local sportswear vendor that using this cool cougar image would be perfect and different enough than Penn State’s Nittany Lion logo that they would be safe in using it. Not sure what alternate universe this sportswear vendor was in when they were viewing the Nittany Lions’ logo because it was a rip-off all the way to the same color, but I’m sure they felt some sense of protection in the relative obscurity of being a small high school in the middle of Texas (actually they’re closer to the coast, northeast of Houston) that no one would notice that they were using someone else’s registered trademark for their school mascot. But…someone did, and that someone notified The Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) in Atlanta, GA, who just happens to manage the licensing of trademarked merchandise for many high-profile NCAA schools and is also charged with enforcing the protection of the trademarked Nittany Lions logo of Penn State in particular. A curt Cease and Desist letter was promptly sent to the small high school with the requirement that they immediately remove the logo from all their uniforms, paint over walls with the logo and stop using the logo for any other printed material or clothing.

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WDWerks.com Redesign Is Live

The new design for WDWerks.com is now live. It actually went live on Tuesday (as I posted last week, I was aiming for Monday), but I was still working on the portfolio pages and getting the slider jquery code to all work properly and just had a scrollable list as an effective placeholder. I was waiting to make any type of formal announcement until that part was ready.

I still have several things to finish on it. In addition to rewriting a lot of the copy (I’m always on the look out for good copywriters!), I will be implementing more jquery effects on the frontpage main image area. I am also working on new CSS for the form on the Contact Us page and will be applying the design to a WordPress theme and launching a dedicated blog for WDWerks. Currently, the blog link directs to this site but that will change soon.

Would enjoy getting anybody’s thoughts or feedback on it. And definitely let me know if you see any problems with it.

Sneak Peak of WDWerks Redesign

My design business website, Whitestone Design Werks, has been suffering from a painfully outdated design and what is even more inexcusable, an embarrassingly outdated portfolio. My cliché excuse is the classic “cobbler’s kids have no shoes” and the fact that I have had plenty of business coming in to keep me more than sufficiently busy–even website design! I haven’t been totally slack. I actually began work on the redesign last December and have sporadically kept plugging away at it and have really been in earnest the past month to finish it up. It is the classic 80% of the time is spent on the last 10% of the work.

Well, I wanted to whet the appetites of anybody who may have visited the site recently and been disappointed with the lacking portfolio that there are better things to come. So, I thought I would throw a little bone and post a screen shot of the new site as it currently stands. Now I know that someone might think that its easy to post a Photoshop comp of a non-functional site, but you’ll just have to trust me that this is the real deal. My target goal is to get this finished by this weekend and have it up and running by Monday, 11/17. It will also involve moving the site from its current hosting service to Media Temple as well as all the email server configuration, and WordPress setup, etc., so that’s a tall order, but doable.

So, without further ado…