Honest question:

If we started putting the O-H-I-O thing on bobcat gear, would we be violating a trademark of some kind?

This horse has left the barn, fellas. You can't go anywhere in Columbus now without seeing dozens of T's, sweats, jackets and signs that say simply "Ohio". There are entire displays of same in sporting goods stores, Homage locations and every other place that sells "local" stuff. Most of these things don't bother to present a color scheme. If that doesn't represent infringement then nothing does.

Because we're in Cowtown, I'll go a step further and claim that virtually all of this is subject to a licensing deal as well and that money ain't traveling down 33.

Sorry, I thought I would clean this up, as my original reply was a little hurried and garbled:

tOSU's marketing of "O-H-I-O" as it relates to the cheer that they do during their games, is a permitted historic theft/use of our name. They cannot prevent us from using that, and we cannot prevent them, due to the same agreement. So our tee is OK, and so is their license plate holder.

Ohio State trademarked the "OH-IO" cheer thing a couple of years ago, and that is their permitted use due to our settlement agreement with them to acknowledge their historic theft/use of our name. I have no idea if they have granted our use of that, or if we even sought the use of it, but I would speculate we did not seek to use it and we did not fight their pursuing the trademark of it.

Not cited above but a permitted use of the singular word Ohio is a singular Ohio in script, denoting the script Ohio band formation. While I have seen tees and other merch that shows a script Ohio in the actual font that the band spells on the field, I have seen other versions of a script Ohio that does not exactly replicate the band formation, which I believe would violate the agreement. However, to my knowledge, we have never challenged those items.

As I understand it, anything clearly referencing OSUcks that uses a singular "Ohio" without "State" that isn't referencing a historic use would be a violation of the agreement.

See the thread in general discussion if you want to see the details of that agreement.

If you see anything that you feel may violate the agreement, send that to Dan Hauser's replacement, Michael Stephens at stephem1@ohio.edu, as his office oversees such matters. I'm sure he would love to hear from you.

Great idea; although most of the morons in this state and even some of our own students would just think it's a St. Patty's Day bucknut shirt.