Here Are 88 Really Odd Terms Trademarked By Major Colleges And Guess Which School Owns ‘INSTABONE’

Colleges look to make money any way possible because the millions made off tuition just aren’t enough. To fill the gap, and the pockets of the overpaid staff, colleges will trademark anything and everything and toss it on shirts, hats and anything they can sell.

In an effort to make as much money as possible, colleges will trademark just about anything, no matter how fucking dumb it sounds.

Trademarking words and phrases is popular among colleges that do a lot of branding, patenting, and merchandising. Lots of the trademarks are standard (“Harvard”). Others, not so much (“Hahvahd”). I looked into the database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and pulled out some of the weirder phrases that are, or have been, owned by colleges.

Among the most interesting are “genius juice” which is another name for water and owned by the Colorado School of Mines and Penn State owned “for the kids” but dropped the trademark when, you know, that whole thing. TIL the trademark on “Urban Meyer” does not belongs to Urban Meyer but Ohio State University.

The University of Colorado Board of Regents owns the trademark on “touched by a nurse.” University of Utah Research Foundation might someday figure out a use for the trademark “POO-GLOO.”

And that brings us to Instabone. INSTABONE! Odd name with kind of a boring backstory — University of South Carolina filed for the trademark in 2005 for bone cement used for medical purposes. So the cocks own Instabone and that just feels right.

Here’s a massive list of 88 crazy trademarks over on Chronicle that they even took the time to arrange into a poem.

Chris Illuminati avatar
Chris Illuminati is a 5-time published author and recovering a**hole who writes about running, parenting, and professional wrestling.