Producing Liscensed Products

[advme27]

My brother and I make wooden crosses and started branching out into college items. We made a cutout of Texas and one of a longhorn. Texas painted the orange color (which by the way we had to match the color because UT has not released rights to copy their burnt orange color.) The longhorn is white and we nail the longhorn on top of the texas. I also designed the same for Texas A&M and painted the TX maroon and the three letters are white.. I am changing this design to maybe the gig'em thumb on top of the TX. LONG story short, what do we need to do to not get in trouble for making items that resemble colleges and logos? I have designs for Notre Dame and of other colleges and would like to start this business without any lawsuits. We also made a larger and smaller star for the Cowboys and Dallas Stars and paint them to the according colors. PLEASE help.

 

[FlyingRon]

Don't make your items resemble or otherwise infringe on the college trademarks. There's no set amount of "tweaks" you can do to make things safe.

These trademark holders have the right to defend against interlopers such as you and I can guarantee that the college and professional sports teams are quite aggressive in protecting their marks.