Ohio State University pounces on SunFrog in TM suit
Ohio State University has taken on t-shirt designer and printer SunFrog in a trademark infringement lawsuit.
Filed (pdf) at the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division on Tuesday, March 21, the university accused Michigan-based SunFrog of infringing its trademark by selling t-shirts online.
Ohio State owns a number of trademarks for ‘Buckeyes’ (the university’s football team) and ‘Ohio State’ at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
It also owns trademarks depicting the ‘Ohio cheer’—an outline of four figures that spells the letters O, H, I and O—and ‘Buckeye leaves’.
The claim said that Ohio State currently has more than 400 authorised licensees for all types of clothing, food products and computer equipment.
“Defendant is well aware of the Ohio State trademarks and Ohio State’s use of the Ohio State trademarks on clothing items,” said the suit.
In September 2014, Ohio State claimed, it contacted the Michigan-based business demanding that SunFrog remove infringing items from its website.
According to the claim, SunFrog’s chief counsel, Kirk Yodzevicis, responded. He allegedly claimed that SunFrog had recently put “gatekeepers” in place to look at each design that had been uploaded by its customers.
Yodzevicis allegedly said: “I would say that the usage of ‘Ohio State Buckeyes’ would have been pulled, had a design gotten to that point since our training and policy went into place approximately six weeks ago.”
However, infringing and counterfeit designs continued to be uploaded to the SunFrog platform, Ohio State claimed.
“SunFrog has not stopped the activity and SunFrog continues to solicit orders for, manufacture, sell and ship infringing and counterfeit products using the Ohio State trademarks,” added the claim.
Ohio State is seeking a permanent injunction, profits, triple damages, collection of the infringing goods and a jury trial.
It has also asked for statutory damages of $1 million per counterfeit mark.
A spokesperson for Ohio State said that the university doesn't comment on pending litigation.
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