The Blanco High School Panthers’ logo would look familiar to any WSU student. That similarity was too close for the university.

WSU and the Collegiate Licensing Company issued a request for the high school to change its logo in August. The Blanco Independent School District in Texas agreed to phase the logo out over a five-year period.

“It was a trademark infringement on our logo,” WSU copyright specialist Marc Lindsey said. “Most cases are innocent mistakes and Blanco probably didn’t know.” Blanco High School is in a rural Texas community and has employed the logo since the early 1990s. The district’s five-year plan to phase out the logo, which was approved by the CLC, will cost the district at least $5,000 in addition to the $5,000 spent on litigation fees.

“We went to a commercial design company to make a new logo that wouldn’t conflict anybody,” Blanco Superintendent Buck Ford said. “After that, we’re going to trademark our design so we can avoid this situation in the future.” The designing fee is $1,500 and the trademarking fee is $800. Blanco will replace the logo on jerseys and walls throughout the school when possible.

“We didn’t know anything about Washington State,” Ford said. “While we were a little frustrated at first, we recognize the issue and know we just need to comply. The Collegiate Licensing Company was very generous.” That cost is far cheaper than other efforts to fight the infringement. Elsewhere in Texas, the Cooper High School Cougars underwent a similar situation with their logo. Cooper, however, was not initially as compliant.

“They were going to fight it,” Lindsey said. “They ended up complying because they had a slim chance of winning. It was going to cost them lots of money to change. They had just put in a $10,000 scoreboard with the logo featured on it. It was going to cost roughly $8,000 to change.” Instances of other schools using logos similar to WSU’s are not confined to these two incidents.

“We had three infringements occur in 2008,” said Alyce Anderson, program administration manager for trademarks. “An alumni of the university was in Texas and informed us of the similarities. We try to work with high schools. They are just innocent infringements.” The usage is considered infringement because the two could be confusing to the public, Anderson said.

“Our logo is our identity,” she said.