Anyone Interested in a Faculty Blog T-Shirt?
Look around your home and you are sure to find no shortage of cheap promotional items carrying the logo of one business or another. In fact, I happen to have in front of me right now three pens emblazoned with the names of three different national hotel chains. None of the hotel chains are especially trendy, so it is hard to imagine that anyone would actually pay a premium to use the pens because of the presence of the trademarks. But some trademarks do have real cache — think Harley, Starbucks, or BMW — and there might be real money-making opportunities in selling pens, shirts, mugs, and so forth linked to those famous names. So, you might wonder, would it be legal to start producing and selling merchandise bearing famous names without first obtaining a license from the trademark owners?
As Irene Calboli explains in a new paper on SSRN, the answer has not been as clearly and satisfactorily worked out by the courts as you might think.