The irony of all this is that the Maine tartan LL Bean used is not even the official tartan of the state of Maine.

The first Maine tartan was proported to have been officially adopted by the state, but the copyright holders have always been extremely strict about who can produce -- or even show an image of -- the tartan. They guarded it so closely that when Drs. Teall and Smith wrote their District Tartans book in the mid 90s that they had extreme difficulty getting permission to picture it in the book. I think the agreement they finally settled upon involved them going back through all the printed books and pasting a blank page over the plate that pictured the tartan.

In any case, there were enough folks in Maine interested in designing another state tartan that would be more widely available. And come to find out, when they did some research, the only indication that the original tartan was approved by the state was a news clipping from the 60s. When the state offices were contacted about it, absolutely no record could be found.

So a new tartan was designed by the Maine St. Andrews Society, called the Maine Dirigo tartan ("Dirigo" being the state motto), and this one was actually formally adopted by the state in 2001.
http://www.district-tartans.com/maine_dirigo.jpg

The argument that LL Bean is using is that the state tartan, as a symbol of the state, should lie in the public domain, and this was the assumption they were making when they selected the tartan for their shirts. It will be interesting to see how this argument flies.

However, the big irony is that the tartan LL Bean used was the original Maine tartan. Had they selected the Maine Dirigo tartan, which is actually the official state tartan, they would not have had to deal with these pesky copyright issues.

Aye,
Matt