Alyson Shontell was driven to the verge of tears after a phone call with her alma mater, Syracuse University, in July 2009.

The voice on the other line, SU’s trademark and licensing director, told Shontell the university would begin legal efforts to stall her attempts at trademarking the word ‘Syracutie’ months after giving her the go-ahead, she said.

Shontell is not the only one who has faced difficulties in dealing with the university when it comes to trademarks. But the legal efforts from SU facing her clothing line have brought the issue to light once again.

After Shontell refused in 2009 to forfeit the Syracutie trademark that she planned to print on women’s and children’s apparel, SU filed an opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But the three-month window for SU to state its opposition eventually passed. After limited communication with the licensing director, Shontell gained legal ownership of the Syracutie trademark in September 2010.

Early this year, Shontell met with an SU lawyer to arrange an agreement but said she was presented with a disappointing offer. Under the proposed agreement, Shontell would become Syracutie’s lone licensor, meaning nobody, including the university, could use the word without her permission. In return, she was expected to sign her trademark over to SU for free.

Months have passed since SU offered the compromise, and Shontell said she is now in the process of hiring a lawyer to help her side of negotiations. No definitive timetable for an agreement has been set, given email exchanges have only recently resumed after a year of silence, she said.

Syracutie currently depends on purchases from locals, but Shontell said the lack of presence in the SU Bookstore has deprived her start-up of a vital demographic — students on campus.

‘The brand can exist outside of SU, but I don’t want it to,’ she said. ‘The biggest hindrance is not being able to bring it to a huge portion of the town, which is the school.’

Since media coverage of Shontell’s struggles began, she received what she called an ‘amazing’ response from alumni, public relations officials and faculty at SU. She said $750 worth of inventory has been moved during a period of three days on her site, syracutie.com.

Shontell remains hopeful the two sides will reach an agreement that will make the Syracutie line available in the bookstore beginning in the fall, she said. But she still feels initial negotiations were handled poorly by SU, she said.

‘I don’t think they treated me the way they should treat anyone, let alone an alumni,’ she said.

Moving forward, Shontell said she anticipates better treatment from SU, given its willingness to communicate.

A trademark on the word ‘orange’ appearing on clothing has also brought forth concerns.

George McGuire, an adjunct professor in the College of Law, was uncontested nearly seven years ago when he registered the trademark on the word ‘orange’ for SU. But in 2006 SU ‘quietly’ filed for a federal trademark for the use of the word on clothing, according to a March 23 article published in Inside Higher Ed. Late last year, several colleges with orange as their predominant color found out about the trademark filing and began filing an opposition form earlier this year, according to the article.

Many colleges mistakenly assumed SU was trying to protect the color orange instead of the brand Syracuse University is typically associated with, McGuire said.

To calm the worries of concerned colleges, McGuire said SU is working with schools, such as the University of Tennessee, to reach ‘coexistent agreements’ that would allow the affected colleges to use ‘orange’ both as a word and color.

Under the more recent trademark on apparel, authorized vendors of SU merchandise must pay royalties to the school whenever ‘orange’ is printed on the company’s apparel. This left then-SU senior Brian Weinreich’s start-up company with $2,000 to $3,000 worth of unusable inventory in 2009 because the company wasn’t a licensed vendor of SU at the time.

Weinreich, founder of Syracuse-based Squeeze My Tees and a current graduate student, was called into licensing and marketing specialist Marc Donabella’s office and advised to remove 10 designs from his company’s website, Weinreich said. Donabella explained to Weinreich that the shirts violated infringement policies and that legal action could be taken if the company didn’t act accordingly.

Weinreich said he now works with SU to sell one of his shirts at the SU Bookstore. But SU still shoots some of his design ideas down, he said. Squeeze My Tees prides itself on ‘funny, edgy Syracuse T-shirts,’ he said.

Donabella did not return calls or emails from The Daily Orange.

While Weinreich described the exchange with SU as ‘cordial’ and said he understands SU doesn’t want to be associated with poor-quality merchandise, the student population is missing out on innovative shirt ideas, Weinreich said.

‘It’s kind of annoying because there are a lot of awesome designs we have, and they shot them down,’ Weinreich said.

In addition to requiring approval from the university before making shirts available to the public, Squeeze My Tees must also pay royalties on shirts associated with campus officials, Weinreich said.

Despite being the masterminds behind the hot-ticket Jim Boeheim screamers, Weinreich said Squeeze My Tees ended up breaking even or suffering a loss from sales after agreeing to donate 50 percent of the revenue to the Jim Boeheim Foundation and paying royalties to SU.

Weinreich said he felt ‘there wasn’t a good response on either end’ when he posed the issue to both the Jim Boeheim Foundation and SU. After fighting for shelf space in the bookstore, Squeeze My Tees was unable to persuade officials to send a mass email to students to publicize the screamers, he said.

But there has been a bright spot to SU’s rigid trademark rules, Weinreich said. Squeeze My Tees’ inventive side has been sparked, as the company is creating more offbeat designs to avoid paying royalties.

‘We’re putting out more underground shirts,’ he said. ‘Some students don’t want the typical Syracuse shirt, they want something different.’

dbtruong@syr.edu

Published on April 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong