The Battle for ‘Houston’
Two of Houston’s biggest law schools are going to battle in a trademark infringement lawsuit over who has the right to use their city’s name. The University of Houston System has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against South Texas College of Law after it announced last month that it would be changing its name to Houston College of Law. The University of Houston claims that South Texas’s new name and red-and-white color scheme is “confusingly similar” to the registered and common law trademarks of The University of Houston Law Center. The University of Houston did not hold back its feelings of the alleged trademark infringement, stating, “Rather than undertake an aggressive marketing campaign or other legitimate effort to raise its profile and standing, [South Texas College of Law] simply, yet willfully, chose to appropriate UH’s red and white color scheme and change its name to a confusingly similar version.” UH claims in their suit that the change by South Texas will cause the Law Center to suffer a “loss of revenue and reputation.” UH believes that this change will harm its reputation because, “In stark contrast to the reputation and renown of [University of Houston] regarding education services, and particularly legal education services … as of 2016 [South Texas College of Law] was not ranked at all in the U.S. News Rankings of Best Law Schools.”
The chairman of Houston College of Law’s board of directors, J. Ken Johnson, issued a statement saying the school would not be backing down. Mr. Johnson claims the college is making the name change to “avoid confusion.” He further stated that there has always been a misunderstanding surrounding the name of ‘South Texas’ because it does not accurately describe the law school’s location in downtown Houston. Johnson asserted that the city’s name does not belong to the University of Houston and that the law school is proud of its reputation and in no way does it want to be mistaken or confused with another law school.
While it remains to be seen if the University of Houston System does own the right to use ‘Houston’ in the name of its law school, what is clear is that the battle for Houston has just begun.
Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/06/28/houston-law-schools-in-trademark-war/
For more information on this topic, visit our Trademark Litigation service page, which is part of our IP and Business Litigation practice.
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