What is Collegiate Licensing?

Collegiate Licensing is when a college or university provides permission to an individual or organization to use their name and or logo (trademark). When an individual or organization is provided permission from the school, your permission allows you to use the school's name and or logo in a multitude of ways, one common way is to use the name and or logo commercially.

An example of commercial use is the UCLA branded Nike shoe pictured below, in this case, UCLA licensed their logo and UCLA brand colors to Nike. In exchange for Nike being permitted to place the UCLA logo and brand colors on a Nike branded shoe, UCLA receives a royalty payment from Nike for each pair of 'UCLA' shoes that are created. The licensing partnership benefits both parties, in that UCLA receives royalty revenue and Nike is able to create a product that they feel has strong customer demand to generate sales.

As mentioned, colleges and universities receive royalty payments or royalty revenue from licensing their name and or logo. The revenue generated from licensing is collected by the school and is used on campus for a variety of purposes, one being, funding the campus employees that run the licensing program. Beyond funding operations, the school can fully decide how they want to invest the licensing revenue. 

UCLA is certainly not the only college or university that licenses their name and or logo to individuals and organizations, nearly all colleges and universities license their names and logos and they do so through departments on campus called Trademark Licensing. For example, if you wanted to inquire about licensing UCLA's name and or logo you would reach out to the UCLA Trademark Licensing Office.