Bennett Sues Alumnae Association for Trademark Infringement

Bennett School sued its alumnae affiliation for trademark infringement, WUNC Information reported. The traditionally Black girls’s school seeks to cease the affiliation from utilizing its title, emblem and different branding and is asking for important punitive financial damages, together with not less than “all income realized” by the affiliation.

Relations between the faculty and the Bennett School Nationwide Alumnae Association soured in 2022 after an investigation discovered that the faculty’s director of alumnae affairs embezzled greater than $185,000 from the establishment and the affiliation. Not like the faculty, the affiliation didn’t press prices to get the funds again or cooperate with the investigation, in accordance with the grievance. On the time, Bennett was battling for its accreditation from the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges Fee on Schools, which deemed the faculty financially unstable. The grievance argues the alumnae affiliation’s “weak monetary controls, oversight, auditing, and reporting posed unacceptable dangers to the School.”

Bennett determined to chop ties with the affiliation and demanded it stop utilizing the faculty’s emblems, however the affiliation has continued to take action to fundraise and promote occasions, in accordance with the grievance. Later makes an attempt to reaffiliate the affiliation with the faculty, inside sure guardrails, finally failed, WUNC reported.

The faculty now claims the affiliation’s occasions compete with its personal and confuse donors. Bennett additionally must show to its present accreditor, the Transnational Association of Christian Schools and Colleges, that it has “ample oversight of affiliated company entities and auxiliary providers” and “full management over all its monetary sources,” in accordance with the grievance.