One of the reasons that businesses or organisations go to the trouble of trade marking their brand is to provide absolute clarity on usage and provide pre-emptive protection against any mis-use (remember the old adage “a stitch in time saves nine”?. With this in mind I was very interested to see that my alma mater had taken steps on its website to ensure that authorised logo usage was made very clear, along with details of how to obtain permissions and acquire licenses for permitted usage and reproduction.

See University of Cambridge : https://www.cam.ac.uk/brand-resources/trademark-and-licensing

Cambridge University has a fantastic reputation that, of course, needs to be protected and so I was interested to find a brand usage section on its website along with an instruction that the university name and coat of arms are trade marked items which may only be used with written permission (amateur T-shirt printers take note!). It's a nice touch that a specific email account brandprotection@admin.cam.ac.uk has been set up to report any suspected mis-use of the protected items.

The terms and conditions section of your website should be an important part of your business where you state your policies (and with the imminent arrival of the GDPR directive how you respect privacy and store data is extremely important) and it is also your opportunity to state boundaries about the use of your names, logos and trade marks where applicable.