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Future for Joe-College.com

Future for Joe-College.com

Kelli Stegeman

Just one day after a federal jury ruled in favor of the University of Kansas in a copyright infringement lawsuit against a Lawrence t-shirt store, some may be left to wonder the future holds for the store.

27 News spoke with the owner about the one fourth of the more than 200 t-shirts in question that were found to violate copyrights.

“I haven't had this much hip in my step for the last 2 months and so we are excited,” said Larry Sinks, owner of the store Joe-College.com. “I’m sure KU feels like they've won the verdict but I feel like we won really. If you cut it up into a pie we still have 75 percent of the pie.”

Sinks says his business is going to do just fine; he is still going to print t-shirts.

In fact they've already got one at the printing presses and it’s about their court experience.

“Now we kind of have a parameter of what it is and we are ready to move forward,” Sinks said.

Sinks believes the more than $120,000 awarded to the university, one-fourth of what KU had asked for, will be reduced one they present figures to the court.

“On a couple of the shirts they said we can't do, we're not 100% clear of why we can't do them and we need to ask the court what changes need to be made to be able to produce the shirts,” said Sinks.

They do know the words “phog”, “rock chalk”, and “jayhawk” can't be printed, but sinks says what the court found they can print is a huge victory for all unlicensed t-shirt makers and their favorite customers.

“I love Joe-College and funny shirts,” said customer Steve Gish. “All of my shirts made the cut so I'm really tasteful I guess to the University of Kansas.”

Joe-College.com will adhere to what the court ruled and the illegal shirts are already coming off the shelves.

Sinks says he will have the illegal shirts off the racks by Wednesday and because they got rid of most shirts when the lawsuit began, there are only a little more than 10 shirt designs that will need to be removed.
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