THE coveted Oxford Blue, traditionally an award reserved for the university's best sportsmen and women who compete in Varsity matches with Cambridge, can now be worn with pride by anyone.
Forget intellectual or sporting achievement, an Oxford Blue can simply be bought at the local garden centre or in chain stores, where it is the logo on a range of casual jackets, shirts or fleeces. Even if it is not the real thing, it means that the exclusivity of Oxford University's famous accolade has gone.
A senior trademark judge yesterday rejected a claim from Oxford University that a Birmingham jacket manufacturer was "tarnishing" the good name of its prestigious sporting accolade. The university, which never trademarked the name itself and avoided merchandising to avoid tainting it, had asked William Trott, a trademarks registrar, to rule that a trademark in the name secured by HS Tank & Sons Ltd, of Birmingham, was invalid.
But the registrar said that while it owned a reputation in the name Oxford Blue, it enjoyed no goodwill so as to stop HS Tank from seeking to exploit it in merchandising because it had never traded in the name itself. The ruling opens the way for the thriving company, which has been selling the jackets since 1985 and which sold an estimated 2.5 million jackets bearing the name between 1992 and 2002, to carry on producing them and selling them under the mark Oxford Blue. The university had argued that, to protect the goodwill and reputation surrounding Oxford Blue, the term has not been actively promoted through merchandise.
But Victor Cogger, chief executive of HS Tank, said that he named the brand after a horse he saw competing at the Badminton Horse Trials in 1985. He said yesterday: "I have been selling these jackets for years. It was only when I went into the European market that the university protested."
Rejecting Oxford's opposition, the registrar said that "even accepting that the term Oxford Blue is representative of a certain notoriety as a sporting award, this case appears to me to be a classic example of reputation without goodwill. The Oxford Blue award is not to be bought or sold in the marketplace. It is for sport excellence, in a limited number of sports, for individuals who engaged in those sports on behalf of the University of Oxford against the University of Cambridge."
One man who can now wear an Oxford Blue without fear of recrimination is the disgraced peer Jeffrey Archer. He was awarded an athletics Blue at Oxford and went on to represent Britain at the Olympics. But Michael Crick, his biographer, said that Archer should not have gained entry to Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1963 after claiming to have three A levels when he had only three O levels. Whether Archer still numbers the award among his achievements is unclear but wearing an HS Tank jacket would technically, at least, allow him to say that he has a legitimate Oxford Blue.