re: Collegiate Trademark Question - SEC Related

Trademark law encourages folks to be litigious about their registered marks. If you don't protect it on one occasion, courts may not allow you to defend it down the road on another occasion. Also, there is the spectre of genericide. Tupperware, Thermos, etc. all used to be registered trademarks before they became associated with all similar products.

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I'd advise em to frick off. There's no way an A made out of icing is the same exact A that they have trademarked, if you can even trademark a letter in the alphabet.

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This comment represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how trademark law works. Here's a very brief primer so you can intelligently discuss it.

1) Trademarks or service marks (herinafter "trademarks") are designed to tell the public the origin of a product or service;

2) the test isn't whether something is exact. the test is a multifactor one that looks for likelihood of confusion;

3) marks are taken as a whole so that slogans that have similar structures but different words can still be confusing;

4) a mark is only as good as your willingness to enforce it. With such a strong and valuable mark, the University must be vigilant in protecting it or risk losing their mark to the public domain;

5) so-called "famous marks" (such as those marks held by Bama) are entitled to even greater protection and make it much more difficult for a junior use to prevail in litigation.

For a beginning study, see Polaroid Corp. v. Polaroid Elects. Corp., 287 F.2d 492 (2nd Cir. 1961). For further study, set aside a lifetime and thumb through McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition