Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 8, 1993 TAG: 9301080171
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
METRO LOGO BRINGS OUT GOOD SPORTS
Shorthand, those of us in the know simply call it "The Metro." But officially, it's the Metropolitan Collegiate Athletic Conference.It's a league of seven universities, including Virginia Tech, that agree to compete in basketball and baseball and other sports and to share some of the proceeds.
The league was started in 1975 and immediately began using its trademark logo.
"We've got our logo registered in the different states where our members are," says Ralph McFillen, the Metro commissioner.
Virginia Tech joined in 1979, so for 14 years now we've seen the Metro logo around these parts. During the Metro Conference tournament in Roanoke a couple of years ago, the stylized printing was plastered on every wall in town.
But it's not just on basketball programs.
On Peters Creek Road and on Electric Road, there are large signs for the Metro Insurance Agency.
Strip the basketball and the skyline from the Metro Conference logo and you've got the Metro Insurance logo.
Identical; been that way for years.
Was someone trying to prey subconsciously off Western Virginia allegiance - such as it is - to Virginia Tech?
"We bought the agency in 1985," said Charles Horner. "It had the logo then and we didn't change it much. We didn't change it at all."
Now, Horner owns the offices in Roanoke and in Wytheville. Denny Woodyard has taken over the offices in Christiansburg; Pulaski; Princeton, W.Va.; and elsewhere.
Horner doesn't know how long the logo existed before the men bought the company, an independent agency that sells insurance on behalf of many underwriters.
"Five or six years, probably," says Horner.
That takes us back to 1980 or so.
For 11 years, no one noticed that the giant fluorescent Metro Insurance signs looked exactly like the Metro Conference league logo.
"What we sell and what they are are so far removed from one another, it's not like we get any benefit from it," said Horner. "Maybe if we sold sporting goods . . ."
In '91, someone snitched and the Metro Conference sicked its lawyers on the agency.
A very large and very intimidating-sounding law firm in Atlanta wrote a rather stern letter to the insurance agency, pointing out Registration Number 1,563,963 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Horning and Woodyard are both changing their insurance agency logos.
Says Horner: "When the new Roanoke phone book comes out, it'll have our new logo in the Yellow Pages."