Are university names trademarked [Expert Approved]

Last updated : Sept 14, 2022

Current : 7494

Can universities have the same name?

Yes, two universities can have the same name. Many universities are named after the place they're located in.

Do we use the for the name of a university?

The general practice seems to be this: if the name of the university comes before the word "university," don't use "the": Oxford University, Columbia University, Simon Fraser University. If the name follows "university of," it will usually need "the": He attended the University of Southern California.

Can I use the logo of my university?

As a rule, university names, trademarks, symbols logos, or images should not appear on commercial websites or other commercial communications vehicles. The university vigorously protects its names, identity, logos and images from unauthorized use.

Can I put a school logo on a shirt?

In fact, copyright and trademark violations can in some cases lead to criminal charges. Selling shirts with copyrighted images isn't impossible, but you should never use someone else's logos on your T-shirts or other clothing without their explicit permission.

Is the name Harvard copyrighted?

Why do I need permission to use the term 'Harvard' in the naming of my activity? "Harvard University" is one of the most widely known and respected trademarks of any kind.

Are school names copyrighted?

School logos, mascots, taglines, and other branding devices are often intellectual property and protected by trademarks and copyrights, which protect the school's brand.

How do you write a university name?

How to Write the Names of Universities and Colleges in Sentences. Capitalize all the main words in the names of universities and colleges in sentences, including words such as university, college, and institute. Purdue University and the University of Notre Dame have been football rivals since 1896.

How are universities named?

Many colleges and universities are named after people. Namesakes include the founder of the institution, financial benefactors, revered religious leaders, notable historical figures, members of royalty, current political leaders, and respected teachers or other leaders associated with the institution.

Why do we say a university but an umbrella?

It's "a university!" Use the article "a" before the sound of a consonant. The word "university" starts with the vowel "u" but the first letter is pronounced like a "y." Therefore, you treat the word as if it starts with a consonant.

Are university logos trademarked?

The athletic team logos of colleges and universities are trademarks and as such cannot be legally copied without express written permission in a license.

Can you use a university logo without permission?

Individuals may not use the University trademarks on a website without permission from Licensing and Brand Management. Businesses may not produce merchandise for resale or give-a-way that utilizes the University's trademarks and its name and/or logo without permission from Licensing and Brand Management.

Can I use school logos without permission?

Logos don't even need to be registered as trademarks to be protected under current law. This means that using someone else's logo without permission, even if it's unregistered, is against the law.

Are public school logos copyrighted?

High school logos are, generally, protected under both copyright and trademark law. Those copyrights and trademarks are very likely owned by the local Board of Education that manages the schools in its district (or perhaps by the State...

Can you use a trademarked name for personal use?

The short answer is that you can use a trademark belonging to another person or company if you use the mark for: informational or editorial purposes to identify specific products and services, or. if your use is part of an accurate comparative product statement.

Can I make trademarked items for personal use?

Trademark would not apply to your personal use, because to infringe a trademark, you need to "use" the mark, and "use" in trademark law generally means selling an item that has the mark on it.

Can I use University logos on my website?

Generally, you may not use college logos without permission / licensing them, as such use may constitute trademark infringement...

Can I use the name Harvard?

1. Faculty members, staff, and students may use or authorize the use of the Harvard name (alone or in conjunction with the name of a specific School or unit) to identify any activity, individual, entity, or publication only with the approval of their Dean or the Provost, except as described below.

What is the Harvard mascot called?

The mascot for Harvard University, as of 2014, is the pilgrim John Harvard. John Harvard was the first benefactor of the university. Harvard University's school color is crimson, which is also the name of its athletic teams.

Are university names public domain?

No, university symbols or logos such as Jayhawks and KU are protected under federal unfair-competition laws. A trademark protects words, names, symbols, or devices that identify a specific product for consumers.

Can you sell homemade crafts with college logos?

If you are going to create products using your Silhouette or Cricut with college or university names, logos, slogans, or mascots you always need to obtain a license. If you do not obtain a license, the trademark owner can take legal action against you, your business, or your shop.

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Comment by Dante Leger

when you create a new business or product or service one of the first things that you're going to do is create a name for it but you want to make sure that you don't go to all the time and effort of creating that name only to find out later that someone else has already registered that name as a trademark so what I'm going to do today is show you a really handy website that you can use where you can check to see if that name or even logo design has already been registered by someone else so let's go over to the computer and I'll show you that site ok folks so this is the website I'd like to take a look at with you today it's the World Intellectual Property Organization website and the address is WIP all dot I n T so if you go to that website address you then will have this page we then need to click on knowledge in the menu and global brand database we want to then click on access the global brand database so I want to do today is I want to show you how to do two simple searches using this database a name search and an image or local search we're going to search for a fictitious company that I'm setting up called a red squirrel and it's going to be a design company so to search for any businesses which have the name red squirrel it's really straightforward you just go to the text area and you type in red squirrel we are also going to put into the goods and services that it is a design service and we just hit search and this is the results that we get so we can see here we've got Red Bull we've got ones just called squirrel and we've got green squirrel we've got purple squirrel we've got design squirrel lots of them here but we do not have red squirrel so it would be okay on the name with that so which is great that's exactly what we want the next thing that we can do is we can actually do an image search to see if there are any logos out there with squirrels in them say we had an idea for a squirrel logo so what you want to do is you want to clear your current search which you can see here you just click on the little checkboxes and that clears the search so we do is you go to the image class section and we typed in squirrel and you'll see on this drop-down it gives us two choices we've got just squirrels or we can have a group so squirrels chipmunks animals which are similar for us we just want to do a search on squirrels today so if you click that you'll see that it changes it into a specific number in the database then you click search and it gives us results 123 pages of 30 results each page of squirrel logos so you can actually have a browse through all of these to see what squirrel logos have been registered as trademarks that will allow you to develop your own mobile concept around a squirrel idea or image and not infringe on an existing one which is in the trademark database and that's it it's really simple to use and it will just give you a little bit more peace of mind that you can use the name that you're thinking of or if it's the other way around it stops you from wasting time and resources pushing forward with a name or a logo design that at the end of the day you're not going to be able to use because someone has already registered it as their intellectual property so they are folks that's the WIPO website it's a great way to do kind of a surface level check just to see if anyone's registered a name that you're thinking about using I would always suggest though that you hire the services of a professional IP lawyer they will do a full and thorough check for you to make doubly sure that the classification that you want to register that Niemann is free if you've liked this video and find it useful I'd really appreciate it if you could share it with your friends and colleagues on social media or by email make sure to give the video a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already um when you do make sure you click on that little bail icon and you'll be notified whenever I release a new video so until I see you next time stay creative folks

Thanks for your comment Dante Leger, have a nice day.
- Darryl Buchannon, Staff Member

Comment by Candy

andrew norwell the ohio state ezekiel elliott the ohio state taylor decker the ohio state university cory linsley the ohio state university carlos hyde d ohio state university bradley roby d ohio state university joey bosa the ohio state university pat elfline d ohio state university michael thomas the ohio state t again junior d ohio state eli apple d ohio state vaughn bell the ohio state marshawn latimer d ohio state university eli apple d ohio state university nick mangold the ohio state university malcolm jenkins the ohio state university nick van nett the ohio state cam hayworth the ohio state university nick bosa the ohio state university demarco jones the ohio state bro it could go on forever if you guys are tired of ohio state grads and alumni from professional football players doctors attorneys grocery store clerks talking about the ohio state university every time that you speak to them uh it's not going to slow down anytime soon because the university has found a way to successfully register a trademark for the word the or the the the the um let's go to some details here because josh german is a trademark attorney and founder of urban intellectual property in washington dc and he noted how uncommon it is uh for universities to protect how it is actually common for them to protect their logos and emblems but it's highly unusual to trademark such a vague word as the probably the most common word in the english language here's his thread about how this all went down and why this is a big deal the ohio state university has the ohio state university has successfully registered a trademark for the the registration was just issued on june 21st by the uspto that's the united states patent and trademark office uh the application was filed back in august of 19. so yes it's been three years in the making why did it take that long to get approved first off there's an image of that uh of that certification that they did get on to the next the uspto refused ohio state's trademark application for the word d on september 11th of 19 for these two reasons the trademark was called merely ornamental and also the clothing company mark jacobs had filed an application for the same word just several months earlier ah this competition for the word ohio state responded by showing the uspto that it was not using the trademark in a merely ornamental manner and then opposing marc jacobs trademark application for the word the okay continuing on ohio state and mark jacobs did settle their dispute while the terms of the settlement agreement were not disclosed the uspto records indicate that ohio state and marc jacobs agreed that they could both own a registration for the word the after that settlement agreement was reached with marc jacobs into august of 21 it took until yesterday again at the time of these tweets now it's been a couple of days for ohio state to continue to clean up the merely ornamental issue with the uspto and go through the rest of the application process which they've made their thing um now one big clarification here uh dave before you jump in ohio state can only claim this infringement this is the way it works because i'm thinking okay what if i i own a store that's called the ramen and i can't put v on it okay so these only is is used by others on clothing namely t-shirts baseball caps and hats all of the foregoing being promoted distributed and sold through channels customary two this is the big part sports and collegiate athletics so only people who are in competition directly as far as ohio state will have that issue so the marc jacobs thing i think was maybe a little bit tangential i don't know but they did have to settle that before they went through and last thought here i think maybe um a proud alum of michigan university the university of michigan there uh uh the university of michigan they they did tweet this out back in 2019 when ohio state started this process just to poke some fun at them they put trademark there university of michigan is the point well the reason ohio state had to trademark v is because apparently dumb asses were not available for trademark and you know the fact of the matter is i thought it was hilarious that those ohio state football players keep saying the ohio state university one half of them didn't even graduate from ohio state and we're talking ohio state which is where you go to college if you can't get into michigan state which is where you go if you can't get into college you know jr i was just talking about this dispute though this whole thing about the ohio state university do we call it the do we call it osu do we call it the buckeyes with this guy who was on my porch the other night and he would not like get off my porch and i finally and he's like he said he was an ohio state grad and so finally i was able to say okay here's the money for the pizza you delivered you left so bro hey all i'm gonna say is i i graduated high school up in michigan in detroit uh in detroit area and i i applied to michigan and i was like i'm not gonna plant ohio state cause i just don't wanna go to ohio there was no knock i have nothing against ohio state in general but if i had gone there i feel like this had been a heavy heavy issue for me because again i can only understand it's one of those things where i love to see it because i get to kind of be neutral but i can understand the frustration and annoyance that michigan folks have and many people use it you know for other schools just because they want to run it but that's part of the trademark situation so maybe ohio state gets the last laugh i don't know well i i mean we feel sorry for the people at ohio state right i mean there's sort of a pathetic lot in life and look i grew up uh where i grew up you know in third grade i i was a michigan fan even though i grew up in indiana i was a michigan fan in third grade there was a kid in my third grade who was an ohio state fan uh third grade he was bigger than everybody else because he was 18 years old so we feel sorry for these folks who have to repeat grades they can't get in college so they go to ohio state and you know that's just sort of their lot in life and we should feel sorry for them and if they really need to trademark the uh because it's just one syllable they can understand it direct all hate mail to david schuster not me i'm just laughing at the jokes because i love them

Thanks Candy your participation is very much appreciated
- Darryl Buchannon

About the author

Darryl Buchannon

I've studied ecology at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville and I am an expert in ethology. I usually feel jealous. My previous job was athletes' business manager I held this position for 13 years, I love talking about needlepoint and racing. Huge fan of Bryce Dallas Howard I practice athletics and collect records.

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