For almost six months, Adam Peruta has been waiting for his $10,000.

Peruta and his team won the money for their Web site, RateMySUClass.com , in April’s annual Business Plan Competition. Syracuse University withheld the money until last Friday, when Peruta says he agreed to change parts of his site – the name, logo and domain name – which the university’s lawyers believe violate SU’s trademark rights.

The dispute started in February, when SU’s lawyers demanded that Peruta stop using the trademarks ‘SU’ and ‘Syracuse University’ prominently on his site and in its name. The university contested that the site could confuse visitors into thinking it was endorsed by the university.

Peruta said he has spoken to three lawyers about the issue and that they agreed he was within his rights to use the university’s marks on his site, which allows students to rate classes, professors and many other facets of campus life – from residence halls and landlords to strip clubs and hook-up spots.

Peruta said he agreed to change the address of his site to SU.RateMyClass.com and phase out the original domain over the next three months. After that, he said, the old domain will no longer link to his site, though he will retain ownership of it. He has already removed ‘SU’ from his logo and said he must also take the words ‘Syracuse University’ out of the site’s header graphic.

‘They were definitely using the money to help us make our decision,’ Peruta said.

The site has been the center of several controversies – professors have criticized its class-rating system, and Peruta shut down parts of the greek life section in February after visitors posted personal attacks on the message board. But the trademark dispute has been the most persistent problem.

The Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises program in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management awards $40,000 each year to the top three student business plans in its campus-wide competition. Peruta said the organizers initially told him he’d won second place ‘fair and square’ and that he’d receive his award in full. But a week after the contest ended, he said, they changed their tune.

Peruta said the liaison between him and SU’s lawyers, competition organizer Nola Miyasaki, assured him he’d receive the money but told him he’d need to work with the lawyers to reach a ‘middle ground’ on the trademark dispute.

Peruta agreed, hopeful he could get his money and settle his legal troubles amicably. He began to work with the university to redesign the site.

‘After two months, it wasn’t us working together. It was them telling us what to do,’ said Peruta, 26, who finished his graduate work this summer and now works as an adjunct professor at SU. He teaches a course in Web site design.

He said he told Miyasaki, the managing director of the EEE department, that he was still willing to work out the trademark dispute but that he wanted his winnings. She declined to give him the money until he reached an agreement with the lawyers, he said.

Miyasaki said Friday’s resolution was a ‘win-win situation’ for both the university and RateMySUClass.com. She declined to comment on the details of her dealings with Peruta and the university’s attorneys.

‘This took a little longer,’ Miyasaki said of the payment process. But it’s not unusual for a few months to pass between the end of the contest and the disbursement of the money, she said.

That time lapse usually occurs because the contest requires winners to form a corporation before the university gives them the monetary award. The university’s law firm usually handles the incorporation at no charge to the winners.

That process presented Peruta with another hurdle: the law firm that was supposed to help him was the same firm that was working against him. The conflict of interest forced Peruta to spend his own money to incorporate his business so he’d qualify for the award.

Peruta said the law firm representing SU has promised to reimburse him for those costs, which he said amounted to $600. And when his site’s transformation is complete, it will mean an end to his current legal wrangling with the university.

Peruta maintains that his site never broke trademark laws and that the process he faced was unfair. He lamented what he said were miscommunications between him, Miyasaki and the lawyers.

‘It’s just a back and forth kind of thing, and we’re stuck in the middle,’ said Mike Morris, a professor in the School of Management who helps organize the Business Plan Competition.

Morris said he knew of the potential trademark issues with the site when Peruta’s team entered the contest, but encouraged them to compete anyway. The winners are selected by an independent board of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, so no professors or university officials had a hand in the outcome.

‘Our interest is just to get it over with,’ Morris said.

Now that it’s over, Peruta and his staff will work to smoothly transition to their new style. Some remnants of the dispute remain, including a disclaimer on the site’s header: ‘we are not affiliated with Syracuse U … in fact, they hate us.’

That’s a throwback to the days when Peruta addressed this issue lightheartedly. It will be gone when the new design is finished, and he’ll take more precautions when he expands his business to new universities; he’s planning up to 15 launches in the next six months.

He currently operates smaller sites at Loyola Marymount University and University of Vermont. Neither has contacted him about trademark concerns.

He says he has ‘no ill will’ towards Syracuse and praises the Business Plan Competition as a great learning experience.

Still, Peruta believes he was treated unfairly. If not for the leverage of the Business Plan Competition, he said, ‘they probably would have taken it further.’ But he’d rather have his $10,000 than his day in court.

Published on September 20, 2004 at 12:00 pm