Written by: Julie A. Reuben
Published by: The Chronicle of Higher Education on 7/8/2022
MBA News Digest Comment: Who will enforce these trademarks? How will it be done? Is it going to be worth the effort and costs to defend these trademarks?
Extracted Content: Perhaps you’ve heard by now that the Ohio State University has succeeded in trademarking the word “The,” a move that attracted widespread news coverage and equally widespread ridicule. (“Whose brilliant idea was this?” wrote one professor to a university spokesperson.) As silly as it seems, the move is not a joke. It’s just the most recent manifestation of the brand mania that has overtaken higher ed in recent decades.
Since the 1970s, American colleges have devoted considerable effort to imitating private corporations’ strategies to establish and exploit brand identity. Legally enforced trademarks have been at the center of this strategy, initially focused on college names and symbols. By the 1990s, the practice expanded to include taglines proclaiming institutional mission and program names, implying that universities’ core activities are distinctive and proprietary. The term “the first-year college experience” is now registered to the University of South Carolina, as if it denotes something unique to that university rather than a common feature of higher education.