Police crack down on counterfeit T-shirts

UCLA and USC students who are itching to buy T-shirts that read
“S’UC” and “F’UCLA” at the
Bruin-Trojan football game Saturday will need to purchase them
immediately ““ before the vendors are cited for selling
illegal merchandise.

Pasadena City police and private investigators will patrol the
Rose Bowl Saturday to prohibit vendors from illegally selling
merchandise with unregistered UCLA logos, said Cynthia Holmes,
general manager of trademark and licensing for the Associated
Students of UCLA.

“We anticipate more (counterfeits) at the USC game,”
Holmes said. “The theme of the crosstown rivalry generates a
lot of entrepreneurial activity.”

She added that investigators are always on the lookout for
counterfeit merchandise during home games as well as every game
against USC, regardless of the location.

“It’s very rare that we don’t see counterfeit
merchandise (at athletic events),” said Heather Holdridge,
who is an investigator of the Western Anti-Counterfeit
Coalition.

Though the T-shirts are illegally using the UCLA logo, many UCLA
students enjoy their presence on campus.

“They’re entertaining,” said fifth-year
psychobiology student Greg Mar. “There’s enough
counterfeit stuff (on campus) that this isn’t going to
hurt.”

Fifth-year psychology student Leo Young said though he generally
doesn’t care about the legality of the matter, the T-shirts
which badmouth both universities is a tradition that should be kept
for the annual USC/UCLA rivalry.

Investigators and policemen will be on guard for poor quality
merchandise that includes low-quality screen printing where the
colors bleed into one another.

But the most telltale counterfeits contain “vulgar”
slogans and “sexual innuendos,” such as the shirt that
says, “A Trojan is good just once, but a Bruin lasts
forever,” Holmes said, adding that this particular slogan has
been around for maybe ten years. The shirt has been so popular that
it eventually found its way into a T-shirt retail store in
Westwood.

Third-year electrical engineering student Kenneth Jenq said he
has seen several of the derogatory T-shirts on campus around the
Bruin Bear, but not usually on South Campus.

“They’re just funny; they should make more of them
… there should be free T-shirts for everyone,” Jenq
said.

ASUCLA’s trademark and licensing division does not license
the manufacturer of anything derogatory to the university.

But sometimes problems with the sale of counterfeit merchandise
can go beyond a simple logo issue, said Elizabeth Kennedy, who is
the director of trademark and licensing at USC.

“Both (UCLA and USC) are damaged by counterfeiting ““
the quality is poor, and we’re concerned about the conditions
(the products) were made under,” Kennedy said, pointing out
that counterfeit T-shirts could be produced in sweatshops.

Both universities are also concerned about the clothing catching
fire, since they are unable to ensure that they comply with the
flammability guidelines.

In the past, vendors have been cited for selling various
counterfeit items that range from T-shirts and sweatshirts to
pennants, baseball caps and underwear.

Last year, ten vendors had run-ins with the law when they were
cited at the UCLA-USC game for selling counterfeit items that were
illegally bearing the UCLA logo, according to records from the
trademark and licensing.

Vendors are cited for a misdemeanor if the total merchandise
being sold is worth less than $400 or amount to less than 1,000
pieces. If the vendors are cited for the second time, it
constitutes a felony arrest.

These vendors usually obtain their counterfeited merchandise
from an underground operations distributor or directly from a
printer where they manufacture the T-shirts themselves, Holdridge
said.

“Most of the people that sell at the games ““
that’s their career,” Holdridge said.
“They’ll go to all types of games ““ college, pro,
baseball, basketball, concerts … they have a list of all the
happenings and they’ll just travel from location to
location.”

Because the UCLA logo is found in other countries like Japan and
France, counterfeit merchandise can exist beyond the world of
USC-UCLA football games and extend to countries outside the United
States.

Though prohibiting the sale of counterfeit items is easier to
control in the United States, trademark and licensing depends on
the overseas company they licensed to identify counterfeit
manufacturers.

And that, Holmes said, is like “searching for a needle in
a haystack” because international laws need more
interpretation than domestic law.

In the late 1980s, a Japanese education institute used the UCLA
trademark and went under the name of “UCLA English
Institute.” Eventually, a trademark lawsuit ensued, which
UCLA won, Holmes said.