Q. What is a Licensed Vendor?
Q. How do I know if a company is
licensed? Q. What do we do when we want to order from a company that isn't licensed? Contact Melissa Jean-Baptiste at melissa@affinity-consultants.com. She can start the vendor on the licensing process or she can work with you to offer that vendor a one-time licensing agreement, valid for approximately 30 days, to complete specific projects. Q. Has the diversity of products decreased as a result of licensing? No, members continue to select from a wide variety of products, ranging from lamps to baby clothes- and yes, of course custom designed t-shirts. |
Little Known Facts
- Trademarks are exclusive property of any organization and should be reflected in all documents and communication.
- Many people believe that licensing will limit their members. In fact, there are key NPC groups that currently have all the "licensing" programs in place but do not enforce their rights or the appropriateness of the products, which can be very harmful to the rest of the Greek organizations. For example, there are Greek group t-shirts out there with images reflecting or alluding to alcohol/drug usage that may actually hurt us because it can and usually does raise our insurance rates.
- Greek manufacturers have been and are attempting to take away Greek trademark rights. These groups claim there is no consumer confusion because Greek groups gave up our marks by abandonment and for failure to control. Their claims have no legal basis as their arguments rely heavily on one legal agreement made between two private parties in 1969.
- In one civil suit filed by a Greek manufacturer against one particular NIC organization, the Greek manufacturer argued that individual chapter members can license or authorize the use on behalf of the organization. Members DO NOT have the right to authorize use of insignia on behalf of the organization.
- Chapters and members are licensees who are granted permission by the IEB or its designee to use the insignia pending they follow certain requirements to remain a chapter or members in good standing. Individual chapters and members have limited rights to use trademarks with the approval of the IEB or its designees. Individual chapters and members do not have the rights to allow non-licensed vendors to use Alpha Phi's trademarks on behalf of the entire organization without the approval of the IEB or its designees.
- The selling of ritual manuals, in any way, shape or form, to non-members is absolutely prohibited. Ritual manuals are considered trade secrets. We can legally enforce removal of our ritual manuals from sale or distribution on Web sites such as EBay®. Should we identify these items to be sold online from other than the Alpha Phi Executive Office, we need to contact AMC.
