Houston Law Schools Waging Trademark Battle

When the South Texas College of Law announced it was changing its name to Houston College of Law, the University of Houston Law Center filed a trademark infringement suit in federal court, claiming the names and color schemes for the two schools were now “confusingly similar.” The schools are just four miles away from each other. “Rather than undertake an aggressive marketing campaign or other legitimate effort to raise its profile and standing, STCL simply, yet willfully, chose to appropriate UH’s red and white color scheme and change its name to a confusingly similar version of the well-known University of Houston registered and common law trademarks,” the school wrote in its suit. UH Law Center touted its ranking as 50 on U.S. News & World Report’s list of top law schools, pointing out that STCL was “not ranked at all.” STCL says it won’t back down from the name change.