To the consumer searching for T-shirts trashing our interstate rivals in stores: the search is pointless because they are unlicensed merchandise.

“The shirts that are a little bit in demand are vulgar or make fun of Michigan. People ask for them, but we are unable to sell it because it is not licensed, and this may cost us a sale here and there,” said Kelly Dwaes, manager of College Tradition at 286 W. Lane Ave.

On game days, the Ohio State Trademark and Licensing Services is looking at the merchandise sold on the streets, while the city is looking to make sure the vendor has a permit, said Rick Van Brimmer, director of Ohio State Trademark and Licensing Services.

“There are problems on game days. You will always have problems when you have a property that is desirable like Ohio State with a great number of people in a relatively small area for a relatively short period of time,” Van Brimmer said. “Those are all ingredients that counterfeiters enjoy because they can be here today, they can be at a Browns game tomorrow and be in Miami on Monday night. That’s just the way they operate.”

A peddler permit must be obtained from the city before selling merchandise on the street – and if found without one, it is a criminal offense, said Sharon Judd, license officer for the Department of Public Safety license section.

“The people that are selling them are not legitimate business people that are interested in supplying regular retail channels. It’s all a cash business,” Van Brimmer said.

The Ohio State Trademark and Licensing Services is authorized to act only on things that would violate an OSU trademark and cannot take violators of another institution’s trademark to court without the backing of the institution, Van Brimmer said.

Unlicensed shirt vendors use the law to their advantage to circumvent prosecution.

“A lot of what you see on the street on our game days – those vendors know what we will and won’t take,” Van Brimmer said. “They would use a trademark of a school that they know we can’t enforce without that other school’s permission, or they would use something that implies an association to our opponent but maybe doesn’t use direct trademark use.”

Most of the problem situations with counterfeiters occur with school logos from rival schools such as Penn State or Michigan, Van Brimmer said.

There are two avenues the trademark office can take. One is a John Doe seizure, in which a representative can serve papers to the perpetrator, seize the merchandise, and then set a court date to deal with the allegations. The second avenue of action is to enforce the criminal statutes for the state of Ohio for trademark counterfeiting. Ohio then uses a prosecutor to try the case, Van Brimmer said.

On game day, law enforcement officers work hand in hand with officials to help confiscate unlicensed merchandise. The severity of punishment is often in proportion to the severity of the infringement, with large-volume offenders receiving stiffer penalties, Van Brimmer said.

The office is not trying to make examples out of first-time offenders unaware of the law, but instead to get the unlicensed merchandise out of the marketplace as quickly as possible, Van Brimmer said.

Sometimes universities cooperate to deal with offenders, like when Notre Dame worked with Ohio State to prosecute violators of both universities’ trademarks during football games in recent years, Van Brimmer said.

The people selling these unlicensed shirts are usually “transient vendors that are just moving around, don’t have a store, don’t have an 800 number, and don’t have a customer service representative,” Van Brimmer said.

“Looking at the overall game day experience, the people that are attracted to that are a pretty small percentage but a small percentage, of 105,000 people is still a significant number,” Van Brimmer said.

Some shirts can be especially offensive and crude.

“The shirts that are just good clean fun – those don’t upset me as much, but some are pretty nasty. Some of the shirts are funny, but others are just distasteful,” Dwaes said.

Miriam Dick is a senior in journalism. She can be reached for comment at [email protected].