Businesses responsible for licensing disclosure

House Editorial

A student sports club that printed T-shirts for a fund raiser learned yesterday that one Harrisonburg business had misrepresented its services by not informing the club of it’s only partial license to JMU’s logo — one that doesn’t allow the logo to be printed on apparel sold for a profit. But, even if the business is unaware of a club’s intent to sell the shirt, it has an obligation to accurately represent its services by informing the student of licensing limitations.

Freshman Justin Illuzzi, Men’s Ultimate Frisbee Club member, fronted money from his own pocket to lead a Frisbee team fund raiser. With a T-shirt idea in mind, he researched local printing services, as Student Organization Services instructs.

He settled on Downtown Athletics. Illuzzi had 50 T-shirts printed for the group to sell to students across campus. The slogan "JMU D-hall" in purple, a popular design for JMU club T-shirts, ran across the chest of the gray shirts, and proved to be popular as the shirts quickly sold out.

Illuzzi rush-ordered 60 additional T-shirts — he hoped to sell at a table on the commons yesterday. While seeking approval for the table, Kathy Sarver, SOS clubs and organizations coordinator, checked a T-shirt and noticed it lacked a trademark logo — proof that Downtown Athletics didn’t own a full license to print the JMU logo. The shirts can’t be sold, and Illuzzi may lose the money he invested in the shirts if he doesn’t receive a refund.

The store does not have a license to print the logo on apparel to be sold for profit, according to sources at the JMU Foundation. Les Mintzer, the recreational sales manager who assisted the team, was aware of the limited licensing that prohibits a profit. He said he wouldn’t print an item for a club or organization if he knew of plans to sell apparel.

But Mintzer also added that the store makes no attempt to distinguish to customers the difference between a logo printed on apparel either for profit or sold at-cost for no profit. If the customer doesn’t ask, the associates won’t tell.

If Downtown Athletics doesn’t immediately offer this information to customers, each is incapable of knowing the legitimacy of the product, whether or not the customer plans to sell it.

Even if a customer at the store does not explain plans to make profit off of apparel to the sales associate, the store should be obligated to ask.

In this instance, Illuzzi said he told Mintzer the team would sell the shirts for profit. Mintzer also said Illuzzi never mentioned plans to sell the the T-shirt. Either way, Downtown owns only a partial license and should be obligated to inform customers accordingly.

While packets of information concerning the fund-raising process are available, no comprehensive list of all businesses licensed to use the JMU logo exists for students to access. While this list would contain more than 1,000 entries, according to Sarver, it would provide reassurance to students seeking to print only from authorized businesses.

If the student is unaware he or she is unable to sell the shirts from a business not owning a complete license and neither JMU nor the business informs him or her of these limitations, the student is incapable of making a responsible decision — one that complies with JMU licensing agreements and copyright law.

Downtown Athletics should refund sales made under false impressions — including the money spent by Illuzzi. He left the store with the impression that the shirts could be sold for profit and was never given any reason to doubt the legitimacy of Downtown Athletics because the store representatives said it owned a license to the logo. Ultimately, the business ethically should inform its customers of its limitations.