Two or three months ago I was driving home along I-35 and noticed a sign for a new restaurant. It looked something like this:
I was rather surprised to see such a thing and wondered how they were getting away with using the name and longhorn logo. After all, UT is awfully picky about that logo. And, frankly, I couldn't imagine them giving someone permission to use it...along with the name of the UT mascot...on a restaurant that clearly wasn't affiliated with The University. I really wondered about it. And, every time I drove past it, I wondered anew.
Until about three weeks ago when I read in the student paper that UT had, in fact, come down on the owners with some sort of cease-and-desist letter. The quotes from the owners were very entertaining. They talked about how this is just a little family restaurant and they'd tried to find out if it would infringe on UT's copyright but they couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone at UT. (On that note, I'll just say that I went to Google and searched for the term "longhorn logo" and guess what's the first entry?...that page I've linked above...so I guess they didn't try all that hard.) There was also some amusing justification for the name...that it was sort of like the way you'd say "drink" in Italian. They claimed that, initially, they were going to open an Italian restaurant but ended up going with a more traditional and "home style" menu but they'd already decided on the name and didn't want to have to find something else. Oh, and, by the way, since the longhorn logo was in blue, rather than burnt orange, they really didn't see a problem. They weren't sure what was going to happen but they'd spent $20,000 on the sign and menus and what not and really couldn't fight the big bad mean university and [insert hand-wringing here]. Too funny.
I haven't heard anything else about it. But, I was driving home along I-35 again a couple of days ago (I usually only drive that route two or three times a month so this was my first "drive by" since I'd read the article) and saw that the sign had been changed. Now, it looks something like this:
So, now the question is, of course: does the new name infringe on the BeOS trademark? Heh heh.
Oh. And...argggghhhhh!!! Ahoy, matey. Etc. Etc.
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