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They said flat out, the use of our fraternity crest is strictly for those within our National Chapters, and even then, we still have restrictions. We can't use our crest in any way for profit. As for people that are not in our Organization, they have to request permission from the National Organization, even if it is for something as harmless as educational purposes.
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True, but just to clarify, they have to do that in order to comply with your national regulations, not necessarily in order to comply with the law.
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In other words, if a company/entity is careless with its marks and does nothing to restrict their use, then they'll be on shakier legal ground if, in the future, they decide to protect/sue.
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This is 100% correct, and a very interesting area of the law. "Aspirin" used to be a trademark of the Bayer company, and fell into the public domain in the USA. In some other countries, such as Canada, though, the trademark is still good, and the brand is just called Aspirin! Other brands of pain reliever in Canada have to call the ingredient by its chemical name.
http://www.aspirin.ca/
Terms like "kleenex" and "band-aid" are used as generic words in our language, just as "aspirin" is, to the point that you can find all those words in any dictionary...but because the Kleenex and Band-Aid companies have done a better job protecting their brands than Bayer did, other companies cannot use those trademarks. Thus, on the box it has to say "Puffs disposable facial tissue" and "Curad adhesive bandages," even though no one outside Curad headquarters ever says "Bring me an adhesive bandage!" when we need a band-aid.
P.S. Thanks, MysticCat, that's very sweet.
