The Duke Chronicle reports on law professors who seem to have more sense than the institutions administrators…
What do “Dude Diet,” “Little D” and “DBag” have in common? Duke thinks they could hurt its trademarks.
A recent study by two Duke Law professors, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins, argues that Duke is a “trademark bully,” as it has more trademark oppositions than any other university from 2015-2018. Trademark oppositions involve trademark holders trying to block others from registering trademarks that they believe infringe on their own—and Duke’s may go above and beyond usual practices.
“As we have tried to demonstrate, many of Duke’s trademark oppositions are expensive, legally ungrounded and, while interfering with the legitimate businesses of others, produce little for Duke beyond bad publicity,” Boyle and Jenkins wrote in the study.
Entitled “Mark of the Devil: The University as Brand Bully,” their study is the first empirical examination of Duke’s protection of its trademarks. Some of Duke’s registered trademarks include the words “DUKE”, “Duke University”, and “Blue Devils”.
From 2015 to 2018 alone, Duke filed more oppositions than the top ten academic institutions, top ten basketball programs by revenue and top ten athletic programs by revenue—39% more than the 28 other universities in the study combined.
Duke’s trademark oppositions generally object to usage of “Duke”, “Devil”, “Blue”, or the letter “D” alone, despite Duke not possessing an absolute property right to any of these terms.
“We’re very much in favor of Duke defending its marks when they’re genuinely threatened,” Boyle noted in an interview. Jenkins said that incidents like an apparel company attempting to register “Cameron Krzyz”, a play on the registered trademark “Cameron Crazies,” is a legitimate opposition on Duke’s part.
Jim Wilkerson, Duke’s director of trademark licensing, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that unlike other universities, “Duke” is a fairly common word with associations of names, royalty and others, “all of which can create public confusion as to whether such uses refer to Duke University or not. In addition, Duke’s fame means there are more counterfeiters than is the case with less renowned schools.”
The Office of Trademark Licensing “reviews over 4,000 requests for permissions to use Duke marks each year, ranging from requests for product approvals to projects, sponsorships, contracts, events, advertising,” he wrote.
“In 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published thousands of applications but we only found 221 that we thought were potential problems, and we ended up filing only 12 opposition proceedings,” Wilkerson wrote. “Most were taken care of through amicable correspondence or agreements to avoid confusion.”
On the trademark search engine Trademarkia, Duke consistently ranked as one of the “Biggest Bullies” out of all trademark owners during the period of the study, coming in second after Monster Energy from 2014-17.
Duke has filed oppositions against businesses attempting to register marks such as “The Dude Diet”, “Little D”, “devils advocate”, “Beach’d”, “The Cameron”, “Goluke”, “Bluefood” and “#MakeDUfunagain.”
