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Business brisk in Joe-College T-shirt shop

Thursday 17th of July 2008 12:35:34 PM

According to Joe-College Manager Erin Adams, she’s had a steady flow of customers since Monday’s verdict in the case pitting Joe-College.com against the University of Kansas. The University accused the store of infringing on its trademark by selling merchandise without a license.

Customers continue to shop as the owner of the T-Shirt store and his lawyer try to decipher a ruling that they say is inconsistent from shirt to shirt. It appears that some shirts are infringing on the trademark and some are not.

Larry Sinks, owner of Joe-College said, “It doesn’t make sense,” said I can’t sell ‘Friends don’t let friends go to Missouri,’ but I can sell ‘Friends don’t let friends wear purple.’ I can’t sell, ‘Columbia, keeping ugly women out of Lawrence since 1839,’ but I can sell, ‘I hated Missouri before hating Missouri was cool.’”

There are several people who have asked Sinks what he can and can’t print, and what specifically is considered to infringe on a trademark or weaken it. This is his standard answer: “I don’t have a clue.”

Many of the people coming into Joe-College this week have had a different question. According to Adams, what they have basically been saying is “‘What can we buy to help you out?"

After more than 10 hours of deliberating, jurors ruled that Joe-College, Sinks and screen printer Clark Orth had infringed on KU’s trademark. It awarded the college about $127,000 (US) in damages.

Whilst the business must cease selling certain T-Shirts, they were told that they could keep on selling around 75 percent of the shirts that jurors were asked to consider. Only around 40 to 50 shirts were found to be infringing on KU’s trademark or considered to possibly be weakening it in the marketplace.

According to Sinks, the store was only selling about 12 to 16 of those T-Shirts currently. “We had already decided to stop selling some of those other shirts,” he said.

There are 2 new shirts, both inspired by the lawsuit and verdict, which should be ready to purchase this week. One says “Unlicensed” on the front and “I Support Joe-College” on the back. The other shirt declares: “Joe-College.com spent $127,000 and all I got was this T-shirt.”

(c) shellgrand,www.sxc.hu