Who Owns Ohio?

I was recently e-mailed a link to this YouTube video, an old clip from the Today show discussing the Ohio University-OSU trademark fight from the late 90's. In 1993, OU filed for a trademark for their "attack cat" logo (seen on lots of their stuff, like their athletics website). The patent was granted in 1995, and Ohio State filed to cancel OU's trademark in 1997. The problem was that this might technically prevent Ohio from using "Ohio," which would be a problem, what with Ohio Stadium and Script Ohio and the Stadium Ohio cheer and so on and so forth. Things were eventually settled in 1998, with OU getting the trademark, and Ohio State getting to use the word "Ohio" in all the ways it's been using it. For the complete story, check out this old article from OU's student newspaper, which provided pretty much all the information for this paragraph.

The video itself is of pretty poor quality, with the audio about five or ten seconds ahead of the video, but it's interesting. It summarizes the lawsuit, then discusses which university is "Ohio." A couple Ohio State students seem to argue that we're Ohio, which seems kind of silly to me. I realize that we have Script Ohio, not Script The Ohio State University. I also realize when I yell "O-H," someone yells "I-O," not "I-O-S-T-A-T-E-U-N-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y," but those two cases are due to a lack of the band members and time needed to spell all that out. If I ask what school someone goes to, I know they mean OU if they say "Ohio." Further, I say I attend Ohio State (or The Ohio State University, if I'm feeling arrogant), because everyone knows Ohio refers to OU.

But maybe I'm just seeing the results of the settlement. I was in junior high when most of this was going on, so I had more important things to think about than lawsuits involving the word "Ohio." So it's interesting to look back on this situation, and see my university and OU getting so worked up about something that seems, at least on the surface, to be so unimportant.