The seal of the President of the United States has long been a sacred symbol of the nation's highest office. In 1999, the Clinton administration even sued a Chappaqua, New York, school for selling seal-bearing fund-raising T-shirts. So it seemed a touch odd when products plastered with the insignia recently hit the open market. There's the America's Legacy watch line, starting at $100, and the 1600 for Men toiletry series, which includes the unfortunately titled Power Lotion.
The seal, introduced in 1880 by Rutherford Hayes, is restricted from commercial use by federal law. Items displaying it have long been found in the White House gift shop, and going back to at least Reagan, there have been presidential M?&?Ms. Now the semiprivate Secret Service offshoot that holds the trademark is loosening its grip. The Uniformed Division Benefit Fund—U.S.S.S.U.D.B.F. for short—is permitting the manufacture of items with the emblem, slightly altered, and collecting 15 percent of sales to distribute to charities of its choice. Its middleman is The Licensing Group, whose illustrious client roster includes David Hasselhoff. TLG president Danny Simon proposed the deal in 1997 and, like Benefit Fund president Tom Muldoon, he sees it as an apolitical success. That view is not shared by Columbia Law School professor Scott Hemphill, an intellectual property specialist. "It potentially raises some troubling issues," says Hemphill. Or at least absurdist ones, as the Bush administration continues to curb the seal's use elsewhere. In September 2005, it demanded that the satirical paper The Onion cease and desist after it printed the signet.
According to Muldoon, President Bush was not involved in the TLG deal, but with a timely Homeland Security–themed brand already in stores, and Dubya sporting seal-stamped socks, the era of executive office expansion is clearly far from over.
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