Last night, my dad and I were talking about collegiate licensing.
He’s thinking about making some small wooden biplanes that are also
kaleidoscopes (you look through the tail of the plane, and spin the
propeller for the effect). I’ve been casting some sterling silver
ball markers with my friends’ best (golf) scores. He’d like to maybe
paint the planes in the college colors and/or put the logo on the
outside… I’m thinking of casting the logo’s for the mark.
As we were talking about it, we came to the conclusion (correctly
after the research that I’ve done) that we should be okay doing these
without licensing as long as we were doing it non-commercially (ie, a
plane as a gift for my brother-in-law, a UGA grad, or a Ga Tech logo
as a ball marker for me).
However, looking at some of the on the web about this,
it all seems to be geared towards “big business” (company wants to
produce official tee-shirts, or Nike wants to put the logos on their
new sneaker). Even the fees that I’ve seen lean in that direction
(approx $1000 for the application process, $200-$500 in advances,
7-10% royalties).
Has anyone else had any experience with this from a
"crafts-person’s" standpoint? Say, for example, I want to produce 30
Ga Tech logo-ed ball markers (that may sell out over the course of a
year)? I’m not trying to get around the legal issues (I just won’t
make the markers, Dad won’t paint the planes in that manner), but I’m
curious what some of your experiences have been with this issue. At
different festivals and shows, I have seen some crafts with
collegiate “stuff”. Are they doing that without the licensing, hoping
to be “small-enough-potatoes” to escape notice? Or, are there
different guidelines or rules for smaller volume?
Thanks,
Jon