My annoyance started a few weeks ago when I learned about a local distillery is ending sales of Cuse Juice because the university has sued them. The reason for the university telling them to stop sales was clearly stated by the senior associate vice president for communications in her statement:
"As an institution of higher education with many constituents, we have an obligation to protect our brand and image."So they are completely concerned about money because associating the university property (the word Cuse) without them gaining from it financially is a problem. Obviously, based on the article, the only ones with an issue is the legal and marketing departments. They are completely oblivious to the potential with this product, they are only concerned with their image being associated with drinking.
Don't get me wrong, this company probably should have approached the university before releasing the product with that specific name but come on! This is a giant, multi-billion dollar institution using it's huge legal staff to squash a small company for no reason other than it wants more money. And that's where the concept of a free market fails! The rich keep getting richer because they can afford lawyers to protect everything while the lower classes can't afford to fight back.
Before reading the next segment, keep something in mind. A few years ago, the university changed from referring to the men's teams as Orangemen and the women's teams as Orangewomen to a unified title of Orange. It will be important in understanding my issue.
Now you may be asking where's the second article and what's gotten me all ticked off. It's got everything to do with something that the university has allowed, Blue & Orange. It's no secret that Labatt is available for purchase at the Carrier Dome during any event held there. And that's likely half the reason the university hasn't sued to "protect our brand and image." They are getting a significant sum of money from selling the product directly to fans within the Carrier Dome (I'm guessing on this as I have better things to spend $100 on). This is a complete conflict of their reason for suing Lock 1 Distillery. What is the difference if you're associated with hard liquor or beer? The result is the same, people consuming alcoholic beverages for the purpose of celebrating their support of your sports programs.
There are 2 differences in my opinion. First, SU sells Labatt products so they gain directly from it with limited need for further discussion surrounding contract changes. Second, and this is more important, Labatt is part of an international company that has a larger legal team the the university does. Which means they can't show up in a courtroom with more lawyers to scare the smaller defendant's legal team. It would also seriously damage their profit margin if Labatt decided to pull all of their products from sales at the Carrier Dome since they are one of the most popular mass-produced beers sold in the Syracuse market.
My biggest issue is the term Cuse as something that the university "owns". As you can likely imagine, Cuse is short for Syracuse. Terms like this normally show up as slang on the streets and then adopted by the university. It's utterly ridiculous that they have been allowed to register this as a trademark. It's an issue there is with the patent and trademark system in the US. Unless they change their name from Syracuse University to Cuse University, it shouldn't be allowed!
Personally, I've been slowly moving away from watching any sports because of this type of thing. SU football and basketball was the last bit of sports that I paid any attention to. Not sure that will continue now...
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