Appalachian uses Affinity Licensing Partners as its primary licensing agent. The primary functions of Affinity include: facilitating the licensing process for licensees, executing licensing agreements, monitoring the marketplace for unlicensed use of trademarks, collecting royalties and conducting compliance review audits of licensed manufacturers. Information on the services they provide, including a copy of an application and license agreement, can be found at affinitylicensing.com/licensing (this is an off-campus website).
Affinity Licensing and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC)
Another responsibility of Affinity Licensing is the enforcement of the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). Affinity work with the WRC University Advisory Council and Executive Committee, as well as regularly attending meetings, seminars and industry events covering anti-sweatshop considerations. Affinity has also visited several of its client's campuses to participate in educational meetings with students and staff regarding this issue, and has addressed numerous on and off-campus interest groups.
Affinity requires all active licensees to describe detailed information regarding manufacturing locations used to produce licensed merchandise. Manufacturers applying for a license are required to disclose the information during the application process. Minimally, Affinity requires each licensee to adhere to the code set forth by the WRC.