Seattle is being treated to a new kind of marketing: corporate graffiti. Over the last two months, the logo of Ecko Unlimited, a New Jersey clothing manufacturer that caters to teenagers (and people who dress like them), has been spray-painted onto walls, electrical boxes, and road signs in Seattle and Portland. The three-inch-wide stenciled logos are appearing singularly and in grids in Capitol Hill and the U-District. The person or persons spraying the logos--the silhouette of a rhinoceros surrounded by a thick, open-ended oval--and the company itself may be liable to prosecution.

Ed McKenna, a Seattle city prosecutor who handles graffiti cases for the City Attorney's Office, says such acts qualify as a gross misdemeanor, carrying penalties of a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail. If the damage exceeds $250, a charge of malicious mischief can be brought, with a higher discretionary sentence. McKenna says a handful of reported taggings can often help police to establish a pattern and apprehend a suspect. Circumstantial evidence is admissible in graffiti cases because it is extremely hard to catch someone in the act of defacing property.

Ecko's marketing department denied that the company is paying people in Seattle and Portland to tag on its behalf, but according to McKenna, "It's unusual that this is going on in [more than one city] at the same time." Ecko is not in much of a position to complain if the city decides to prosecute: According to McKenna, the T-shirt company offers bounties to informers who help the company identify label pirates selling Ecko knockoffs.

No investigation of the unconventional advertising (which is being counter-tagged with the words "CORPORATE GRAFFITI") is being pursued by the City Attorney's Office, because no one has yet called the police about the taggings. "We need a police report to begin an investigation," says McKenna. "It's hard to put a corporation in jail, but they could be charged with accomplice liability."