Cease-and-desist leveled against bootleg Bronco merchandise company

By Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald

There’s something other than money that can be counterfeited — Western Michigan University merchandise.

A cease-and-desist order has been issued against a Texas company looking to produce WMU merchandise that may have violated trademark laws.

Jam Sports Marketing had been calling businesses in Kalamazoo to solicit advertising on a WMU T-shirt they would distribute on-campus later, said Bob D’Amelio, assistant athletic director in charge of sports marketing, publicity and licensing.

“This represents two issues for the university,” D’Amelio said. “First, it’s misrepresenting the university and second, we have no clear picture of what’s being printed on these T-shirts. We’re assuming they’re using our trademarks, and that’s illegal.”

Marissa Ingle/Western Herald - Many of Western Michigan University’s trademarks can be found in the Bernhard Center.

License Resource Group, the Holland-based company that handles WMU’s trademarks, issued the cease-and-desist order through their attorneys.

Since the order’s issuance, Jam Sports has backed off WMU merchandise, according to Kevin Murphy, Jam Sports vice president.

“This was absolutely a simple misunderstanding about how our [no-cost] program was represented,” Murphy said.

According to Jam Sports’ Web site, www.jamsports.net, the company offers a no-cost promotional service to schools by assigning project coordinators to solicit advertising from communities around participating schools.

Those advertisers pay to have advertising on the shirts, which Jam Sports distributes at a function of the school’s choice at no cost.

While Grand Valley State University and two other schools have also dealt with similar Jam Sports programs, this sort of thing doesn’t happen often, D’Amelio said.

“Sometimes high schools will adopt our Bronco for their school,” D’Amelio said.

“They don’t mean it with malice or to intentionally break trademark laws, and usually it ends amicably for us. It’s something we have to do. If we didn’t we would lose our privilege to those trademarks.”

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Mar 7 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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