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- BUSINESS, Page 69Business NotesMARKETINGSeat of Higher (L)earning
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- Harvard University, whose business school has long been a
- training ground for some of the nation's top corporate minds, has
- decided that it will no longer give away its profitable name
- gratis. By January 1991, companies that produce everything from
- sweat shirts to chairs to coffee mugs emblazoned with the name
- Harvard, the university coat of arms or the motto VERITAS (truth)
- will have to pay for the privilege. Despite an endowment of some
- $4.5 billion, the oldest U.S. university can always find uses for
- an extra $500,000 a year, the amount that the trademark license
- could eventually produce.
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- Harvard tested its product appeal during its 350th anniversary
- in 1986, and has looked closely at trademark possibilities in
- Japan. The take from anniversary merchandise was about $50,000, and
- for the past three years items led by a Harvard University line of
- menswear have generated $130,000 annually in royalties in Japan.
- Harvard would like to license a maximum of 100 U.S. companies to
- produce merchandise.