Columbia v. Columbia

 

This story has been around for over a month, and Curmie got most of this essay written weeks ago, but couldn’t quite push it over the finish line.  It’s interesting enough, though, to try again, even if we’re not exactly talking about breaking news.

It’s not a surprise that Curmie learned about this very American news item from the British newspaper, The Guardian.  He confesses that when he first saw the headline, “Columbia Sportswear sues Columbia University for trademark infringement,” he thought the article was from Andy Borowitz or Not the Onion.  It isn’t.

What’s particularly interesting here is not merely that the clothing line has a point, but that this is yet another example of administrative incompetence at one of the nation’s premier universities.  There may have been earlier examples, but the incident that stands out is the response to student protests in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israeli (and other) citizens in October of 2023.

The university’s administration managed to make about every conceivable mistake then: stifling First Amendment protected demonstrations while simultaneously taking little or no action against people who really were breaking the law (blocking access to buildings, holding staff against their will, etc.). 

Then came the utter mishandling of the finals-week protest in the library and the ongoing capitulations to the Mad King of Trumpistan’s various whims.  Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi’s “open letter” to Interim President Claire Shipman, despite being a bit overblown in places, makes some legitimate points, especially about using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.  The problem is that although that the IHRA describes it as a “working definition” and states explicitly that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic,” there are a lot of other places where that document infringes on free speech rights. 

More problematically, it is these parts of the definition that have been foregrounded of late, to the point at which Kenneth Stern, one of the authors of that policy, objected to the way it is now being employed, saying it “was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus.” 

But all of those stories involved decisions that seem to be based on a lack of ethical fortitude.  The recent lawsuit stems from something more fundamental: garden-variety stupidity.  Every college and university in the country has a policy regarding the use of the name of the school on clothing, glassware, and so on.  Everything goes through the marketing folks, whose job it is to make sure the school is presented positively and that all the legal requirements have been met.

Curmie has a rather large collection of show t-shirts and some from advising an honor society, every one of which went through the approval process.  (We had to fight for one of the show shirts, but it was because the image showed broken doll parts.  No, Curmie is not kidding.) 

We can reasonably object to the ability of a sportswear company to trademark a term that was associated with a university for nearly two centuries before the corporation even came into being.  Suing for damages instead of sending a “cease and desist” seems a bit much.  And if Curmie reads just the word “Columbia,” his first thought is of the university, and his second thought is that someone spelled the name of that South American country incorrectly. 

All that said, there was an agreement signed a couple of years ago.  One presumes that the contract specifies that the relevant gear would be limited to things available to the public, as opposed to, say, athletic uniforms.  Anyway, all the university needed to do was to put something on their hats and t-shirts and so on that clearly indicated that the “Columbia” in question was the school and not the company.  This could be the word “university,” or the insignia, or the lion mascot, or a specific academic department, even the year the university was founded. 

These stipulations do not strike Curmie as oppressive.  But, says the company, there were items listed on a university website that had none of those identifiers.  The image shown above would be an example.  It’s especially significant that the blue color is associated with both the university and the company. Note: Curmie didn’t find that photo on an official website, and it may date from prior to the contractual agreement; it’s intended to suggest the kind of thing under consideration, not necessarily to be construed as evidence.

What’s significant here is that even the most litigious corporation isn’t going to bring a lawsuit against a university unless they have some pretty convincing evidence.  They may be a bit on the over-zealous side (what harm have they actually suffered, even if all their allegations are true?), but to say the university doesn’t come out of this looking good is to err on the side of understatement.  When someone like Curmie is even tempted to side with a big corporation against an Ivy League school, well…