About Licensing

The University of Southern Mississippi, the second largest university in the state, maintains a licensing program that works with more than 200 licensees and over 100 retailers to generate more than $3 million in sales of licensed product each year.

The Southern Miss licensing program is an internally based independent program, enabling it to work directly with manufacturers and retailers without using an intermediary. This ensures that decisions can be made promptly and that manufacturers can become licensed with the university in a timely manner. Additionally, maintaining an independent program enables the university to keep a larger portion of its royalty revenue, which benefits the entire university.

The primary functions of the licensing department at Southern Miss include contract negotiations, royalty collection, maintaining licensee databases, performing enforcement, managing a retail relations program, publishing a licensing newsletter, approving product lines and designs, and educating those inside and outside of the university environment of licensing policies. The only licensing function not performed in-house at Southern Miss is the auditing of licensed manufacturers; this function is conducted by the Licensing Resource Group of Iowa.