Around this time of year, you often see a media push by a group with the descriptive acronym CAPS (Coalition to Advance the Protection of Sports logos), warning fans of counterfeit licensed sports merchandise, especially t-shirts and hats.  The organization, which is a consortium between the property arms of the four major sports plus the Collegiate Licensing Company, which handles many colleges, conferences and bowl games nationwide, stresses that consumers may feel like they’re getting a deal by buying knock-off merchandise, it almost always of lesser quality (it might even include a typo or two, which happens more often than you’d think).

It’s among the busiest times of the year for CAPS, as bowl games, the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl and the NHL Winter Classic and NBA All-Star Game all coming up in the next few weeks and plenty of fake goods flooding the respective markets.

Some fans may scoff, saying that the leagues, teams and bowls make enough money as it is.  But to me, the important principle is that of intellectual property.  Writers have a right for their work to be compensated, as well as artists, inventors, designers, architects, anyone who creates something.  Those entities own those rights and have in many cases spent millions to build those brands and marks.  For “bootleggers” to print up t-shirts with those designs on them undermines the whole creative process and hurts legitimate vendors who have committed to providing the legal merchandise.

NHL Properties is reaching out to consumers with a list of ways to help them spot fakes; you can read them here.

The same thought applies to counterfeit tickets, which still continue to plague consumers on non-authenticated sites.  Though many preventative methods are in place to protect the arenas and teams, the result is a flood of tickets that may look real, and may even have once been real, but may be copies that have already been accounted for.  As with merchandise, it’s best to purchase from the original team or a partner or reputable seller.