The Harrisburg School District will have to select a new school logo after the University of Missouri raised concerns that the Harrisburg tiger logo was “confusingly similar” to its own tiger.

The district has stopped using the logo on its Web site and stationery, and will gradually phase it out on athletic jerseys that now display it, Superintendent Jim Holbeck said.

Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC), the licensing agent for the University of Missouri, contacted the school a couple months ago about the logo and has been working with the district since to address the issue, Holbeck said.

Harrisburg adopted their tiger last year after working with Daktronics on the logo and was advised the logo shouldn’t pose a problem, Holbeck said.

“If I had to do it all over again, which I am, I wouldn’t have relied only on that advice,” he said. “It’s a lesson learned.”

CLC has been very cooperative in working with the district to make sure eliminating the logo is not a financial burden to the district, Holbeck said.

Jerseys with the logo will be able to go through the normal cycle of replacement, about four years, and the largest tiger, which appears in the center of the district’s new football field, will be allowed to live out its 20-year life span.

Trademark issues with high school logos are fairly common, said Jim Aronowitz, associated general counsel with CLC, and typically CLC works out a phase-out plan to ease the financial burden of changing logos.

“Our goal here is not to insist the logo be removed the next day or the next week. We want to limit the financial impact on the school,” said Aronowitz.

CLC, based in Atlanta, handles trademarks for around 200 colleges and universities, as well as the NCAA trademark. Using college logos is a fairly common practice for high schools, and its up to each individual college how protective it wants to be with its logo, Aronowitz said.

Aronowitz didn’t know how the University of Missouri found out about Harrisburg’s logo, but said that information often comes from a variety of sources including former alumni living in a district, university licensees in the area or even hobbyists who track logos and their history.

Harrisburg discussed several options that included making slight changes to the tiger before deciding to create a new logo, Holbeck said. The district felt the situation offered a great opportunity to create something that was unique to the school, he said.

“We see it as a positive thing. Let’s move on and find something original, something that’s totally ours,” said Holbeck.

The district is asking its students and staff to design a new logo and the students will pick a new tiger from what’s submitted.

Harrisburg will be painting that logo on the floor of its new gym, which will be completed this summer along with the new high school, so a new logo should be chosen by the end of the school year, Holbeck said.