0. GI Bill® Trademark
AVECO June 2017

1. GI Bill® Trademark
In 2012, Executive Order required VA to trademark GI Bill and any military and veteran-related terms.
In the same year, a group of State’s Attorneys General led an effort to sue a company that owned the website “GIBill.com,” a website they found misled Veterans looking for information about their education benefits. The website was funneling visitors to specific schools.
To continue this effort to protect Veterans from deceptive recruiting practices, VA trademarked the term “GI Bill” to enable us to pursue any potentially bad actors feigning association with VA and the GI Bill.
Brief history
As SCOs, you know how you become the contact for every EVERY organization that wants to help veterans?
What if YOU were part of that organization? ??
You aren’t SCOs to make the money. Most of you care for the welfare of your veteran students.
Has anyone here read the Executive order?

2. Authorized Use
Third-party use of the trademark is restricted to the education and training institutions eligible to receive VA education benefits, State Approving Agencies, and recognized Veterans Service Organizations.
Parties not identified are prohibited from using GI Bill in any manner that directly or indirectly implies a relationship, affiliation, or endorsement with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

3. “(“ + “R” + “)”= Trademark: How To
In WORD: Insert --- Symbol --- it’s available in that section.

4. Trademark Terms of Use
Make sure your school uses the trademark according to the Terms of Use on our website.
The trademark symbol ‘‘®’’ should be placed at the upper right corner of the trademarked phrase in the most prominent place at first usage using the trademark attribution notice.
‘‘GI Bill® is a registered trademark of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). More information about education benefits offered by VA is available at the official U.S. government Web site at 
May be used in print, electronic, radio, digital, or other media as established by the terms of use.
Use of the registered trademark symbol is not required each time the mark appears in a single document or web page.
**Symbol should be prominent on all individual documents and Web pages**

5. Principles of Excellence
Executive Order 13607– Establishing Principles of Excellence for Educational Institutions Serving Service Members, Veterans, Spouses and Other Family Members Section 4. (f) take all appropriate steps to ensure that websites and programs are not deceptively and fraudulently marketing educational services and benefits to program beneficiaries, including initiating a process to protect the term "GI Bill" and other military or veterans-related terms as trademarks, as appropriate. NOT JUST SITES YOU ARE THE WEB ADMINISTRATOR FOR: Catalogs & Department .pdfs Online fix: The web manager could go into the catalog document, search the GI BILL term and replace with GI BILL®. The marketing team could do the same with .pdf documents. Printed catalogs will be more challenging to fix.
We have found numerous catalog updates where the trademark symbol was not used. Back in February, I was at a large school in another state where a department had a .pdf brochure published to their website that was missing the symbol. The publication date was October 2016.
If you’re not sure about it, please visit gibill>education and training>trademark terms of use. NOTE: the attribution notice for use of trademark must be on the document/webpage.

6. Trademark Enforcement
The GI Bill trademark is not to be incorporated or included in company or product names, trademarks, logos or internet domain names.
The term ‘‘GI Bill®’’ is to be used solely to promote official VA benefit programs and services and must include the proper trademark symbol.
Use of the trademark attribution notice, indicating that the mark and all associated services belong to VA, is required and shall be taken as evidence that use of the mark is in good faith.
No entity shall use the GI Bill trademark in any manner that directly or indirectly implies a relationship, affiliation, or association with VA that does not exist.
Disparagement or misrepresentations of VA services through use of the mark, or by the use of confusingly similar wording, are strictly prohibited.
Compliance is checking!
At a large IHL school with flight, I was looking up a school requirement and found the trademark was not being used in Aviation Department marketing literature.
My suggestion: develop your relationship with your marketing department. I worked at 2 IHLs. The marketing department keeps the webpages pretty locked down, except for the ‘owners’ of the colleges/departments. SCOs may not be able to check every webpage, but the marketing department/web developers have tools they can run searches across every school page looking for veteran information, and the GI BILL(trademarked) specifically. They should be able to update the symbol in on all webpages.

7. Trademark Violation: How Can you Help?
VA reserves the right to bring action against any party that violates VA’s Terms of Use concerning the mark in federal court.
Suspected violations must be reported by to
Date suspected violation occurred
Location
Explanation
Designated point of contact information
You can help us raise awareness about the trademark and the protections it provides by using it correctly.

8. Questions