For more than a century and a half, the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, has held meetings, entertained members and carried on its daily business - all under the name "The Harvard Lampoon."

And so, with what it felt was a legitimate claim, the organization recently moved to register its name officially as a trademark under both "The Lampoon" and "The Harvard Lampoon." But when they applied for trademark rights, Harvard University said no.

The problem lay with the use of the word "Harvard"--the University essentially said it had such a strong claim to the Harvard name that even the Lampoon could not register it without permission.

According to Tyler E. Chapman '90, a Boston attorney and trustee of the Lampoon, Harvard offered "a very reasonable" counter-proposal: the Lampoon would forever cede its rights to both "The Harvard Lampoon" and "The Lampoon" to the University, in exchange for a pledge from the school never to charge the organization for the use of the name.

"It was not really what we wanted to do," Chapman says. "We realized what we're really interested in is the name 'Lampoon.'"

The magazine staff took a rare step and opposed the University's push to extend its rights over the names of campus organizations and decided simply to register the name "The Lampoon," the application for which is still pending.

All large student organizations--Harvard Student Agencies, The Harvard Crimson, other publications with the Harvard name--will face the same decision over the next couple of years: either to license their name from the University or to face the risks of an unregistered name.

New Aggressiveness

The University is pushing aggressively to protect its 363-year old name, says Enrique J. Calixto, the University's U.S. trademarks administrator. Formal ownership of all Harvard's copyrighted material lies with the "President and Fellows of Harvard College."