[NERD-ALERT: Only read this if you're interested in the intersection of politics, sports, graphic design, and intellectual property rights. Or if you're just a geek.]
By Jay Jones, June 6, 2008
Right now, I’m kicking myself.
Why? We’re talking about fonts, here. I’m mean, really, how slow does it have to be for me to be writing about fonts?
But you want to know the sad part, though? These type of things usually don’t get past me. Remember when the Playstation 3 came out? Yeah, I was that guy that said, “Is Sony using the Spiderman font for the Playstation?” (Sony owns both properties.)
Well, I missed this one, big time. But considering it’s political season, the right and the left didn’t.
And the University of Oregon’s Oregon Commentator picked up this oddity, too.
Here’s a quick comparison:
Gordon Smith’s new logo. You can see it used in his new television spot, “Get It”, here.
Here are a couple of logos for the University of Oregon. You can find more University of Oregon logos at the trademark management website here.
And here’s a comparison. The red represents the characters from the above logos overlayed on the Gordon Smith logo:
You see, here’s the thing about this logo: the University of Oregon owns it. Even though the “Mike Bellotti” font (“Bellotti Bold” might be its proper name), as it’s called within the Athletics Department, was designed by Nike, it belongs the the UO. There might be others out there like it (Eurostile, Blair, Bank Gothic, & Serpentine), but there’s only one “Oregon” font.
And it’s copyrighted. Federally registered. All that jazz.
[Update: Apparently, you can not copyright a font. The process of creating a font can be copyrighted, but not the font. Kind of insane. Anyway…And Oregon's logos and marks are the only things that can be federally registered. But the UO does own the font. And, again, I think it's uniquely their font. One other geeky font thing here: the font for the logo is different than the tag line. I believe the "Common Ground. Common Good." text is using Handel Gothic, a font often mistaken as the UO font.]
Here’s one other thing about the font: for designers working with the UO, getting it is a bit of a Holy Grail. Only a few at the Casanova Center have it. Just try getting a hold of it. Good luck. Believe me. Because I’ve tried. And then try using it and see if you don’t get a call from the Trademark Management office.
On a bit of a lark, I decided to call Gordon Smith’s campaign headquarters to see if they had in fact used the Oregon font for the logo. And they said, “No.”. (You be the judge on that one. Although, I doubt a staffer is going to know if a certain font was used for the new logo.)
Then I called the Oregon’s Trademark Office to see if Oregon did own the font. And I was told they did, along with all that other stuff about copyright and it being federally registered (which I guess now is a bit of a non-issue].
But the Trademark Office also told me something else. I had not been the first to call. Looks like The Oregonian called yesterday. We’ll see where that goes.
So, what does this all mean?
Not anything real serious, other than the fact that the University of Oregon Athletic Department finds itself in another really weird situation (A friend commented to me this afternoon that Oregon is the only school to actually have a font designed for them.)
Here are some of the questions and implications:
- If U.S. Senator Gordon Smith’s campaign is using the Oregon font for his logo, he’s using a copyright-protected font for his campaign. (And, yes, on occasion we use copyrighted material, as well. However, we are not United State Senators running for re-election.) [Again, this is probably a non-issue now. I know fonts pretty well. And that font is the Oregon font. While it might not be copyright-protected, it is owned by the UO. Therefore, I see it as the campaign using the UO's property without their permission.]
- If the campaign is using the font and is called on it (and I don’t think it will be), he’s going to have to sink some money into changing up some of his materials. It might be just on the commercial. I don’t know. But if the campaign is producing a bunch of collateral material such as signs, banners, brochures, he’s going to incur some costs.
As a side note, this is a bit of an intellectual-property issue. Not a big one. But I will point out that big time Vancouver, B.C. (I lived in Vancouver for a year, and became way too familiar with hockey and the CFL) sports talk radio show host Dave Pratt just had his column canned from The Province for plagarizing ESPN’s (formerly of Sports Illustrated) Rick Reilly.
- How did the campaign get this font, considering it’s held tighter by the UO than Joan Collins’ (or Joan Rivers’) face?
- What do you think OSU fans think about this? “I get it. I’m Gordon Smith. Working with both Oregon and Oregon State fans. And by the way, I like Oregon’s logo better than yours, Oregon State.”
Duck fans, it’s a slow day.
And right about now, I’m kicking myself for writing this. But, at least, I used the right font.
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