SOS questions D-hall T-shirts

The men's ultimate Frisbee club had to abruptly end its T-shirt fund-raising campaign yesterday afternoon amid questions of whether trademark laws were violated by the printing of T-shirts with the JMU logo.

"We basically sold all 50 shirts [from an original order] by word-of-mouth," said freshman Justin Illuzzi, Ultimate Frisbee Club member. Now, the T-shirts in question, which read "JMU D-HALL," are part of a second order of 60 additional shirts placed with local printer Downtown Athletics.

Complications arose when Illuzzi tried yesterday morning at 11 a.m. to secure vendor space to sell the shirts on the commons that same evening.

Kathy Sarver, clubs and organizations coordinator for Student Organization Services, told Illuzzi he could not sell the T-shirts because they did not carry a copyright symbol. "She got on the phone with the JMU Foundation and they said that Downtown Athletics wasn't licensed to do this," Illuzzi said.

Joe Urgo, JMU's associate director of events and conferences, said that the copyright symbol and licensing are how "The University protects its name and logo "from improper use.

"If they want to have a logo of some sort, they have to get that approved through the Foundation," Sarver said.

Jim Richardson, president of the JMU Foundation, said the Foundation protects the logo by issuing trademark liscenses to approved printers and product manufacturers. Several companies, such as Downtown Athletics of Harrisonburg, receive what are commonly known as "limited licenses." With these, printing companies can produce products bearing the JMU logo for in-house use only.

"If you're a baseball coach and you want a bunch of practice shirts that say ‘JMU Baseball,' for the team, internally used only," that is acceptable, Richardson said.

The printing of products for sale without licensure, Richardson said, is "a violation of trademark law."

"We will talk to Downtown Athletics to see where the slip-up was made, if there was a slip-up," Richardson said.

Sarver said, "This is the first we heard of a limited vendor license. That's one of those cracks that people could fall in.

"I would hope that the vendor [would differentiate] because he would know what his limits are," she added. "It was obvious to me, with this T-shirt, that it wasn't for a club, it wasn't for a sports team."

Les Mintzer, the Downtown Athletics recreational sales manager who organized the printing and the sale of the T-shirts to the Frisbee team, said, "It's basically understood that we don't [print for-sale products].

"If I knew this was a fund raiser … I wouldn't have sold it to them," Mintzer said.

Illuzzi said that he was "500 percent positive I told them it was a fund raiser."

Mintzer said he wasn't sure if the ultimate Frisbee team would receive a refund.

Sophomore Stephen Magneson, ultimate Frisbee team member, said, "We're just trying to get the money back because it's a product we can't sell — it's an illegal product."

Illuzzi said he fronted the money to buy the T-shirts being held in limbo.

Magneson added, "We'll sell shirts anyway, we just have to go through the whole process again."