Quote:
Originally posted by Lady Pi Phi
What if Converse had wanted to pay for permission to use the colours and dates from the beginning to market these shoes to members of NPHC groups. Would your nationals have allowed this?
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I imagine so. It just comes down to a question of unauthorized merchandise. When you're selling merchandise that uses trademarks of a certain GLO, you have to pay for a license that allows you to do that. Every GLO has problems with people doing this, but most of the time they're small companies -- not large corporations like Converse. I imagine the decision to go after Converse was simply a matter of economics, since they stand to make a lot more money using the NPHC orgs' image than your average person making letter sweatshirts in their basement without a license.
Quote:
Originally posted by PsychTau
The fact that they're using the name "Greekpak" doesn't help their case any either.......
Don't you think a Greek or someone very familiar with the Divine Nine had to come up with this product? A general person wouldn't really make the connection between colors and dates, unless they were paying sharp attention or knew quite a bit about the Greek System already. Interesting....
PsychTau
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The impression that I get is that within the "black community" HBGLOs are very recognizable. This has part to do with the fact that there are only nine of them, as opposed to 90-something NPC/NIC organizations, and part to do with the fact that they tend to be more involved with their organizations after graduations, and part to do with the fact that they do more work outside of the college community than we do (and I'm sure there are other factors too). So it wouldn't be very tough for someone who isn't Greek to be familiar with GLO colors and symbols, especially if they went to a HBCU or another college where the organizations generally have a strong precense.
I also want to point out that in NPHC organizations, the founding year seems to have more significance than it does in NIC/NPC. If you look at their websites, a lot of them include the founding year, as in
www.aka1908.org. If you went to a school where Tri Delt was big, you might know that our colors were blue, gold and silver but probably not that we were founded in 1888. The impression that I get is that founding years are a more well-known fact to those familiar with the Divine Nine than they are with NPC/NIC groups.