Who Owns The CFC Logo?

As I write this on March 6, 2007, the Combined Federal Campaign's training workshop for campaign managers and volunteer leaders is underway in a hotel in Seattle.  In the hotel lobby, outside the ballroom, attendees can visit with a number of commercial vendors exhibiting their wares -- all the awards and pins and doodads and whatnots so necessary to waging a successsful campaing, and all bearing the CFC campaign logo.  But there's a problem.  One of those vendors, Sales Service America, a subsidiary of United Way of America, claims that it owns the CFC logo and that if other vendors want to show it in their catalogs or on their websites they must first pay a license fee to United Way or face the wrath of United Way's high-powered lawyers.  The US Office of Personnel Management is aware of this situation.  Doesn't it strike you as odd that the government would accede to United Way's claim that it owns the logo and seal of a government program?  Who's in favor of a new CFC logo, one in the public domain?

Comments

[Bob]

I would agree that the U.S. Government should not be using a logo that isn't theirs for such an important charitable giving campaign.