Building Naming Rights: Outside Law Firms Need Not Apply

The owner of New York’s General Motors Building hopes to entice potential buyers with a suggestion that the new purchaser could license the building’s naming rights.

Most buildings are named after companies that owned or developed them or as part of a deal to secure an anchor tenant, the New York Times reports. GM now occupies just three floors of the 50-story building, and its naming rights expire in 2010. A sales brochure suggests naming rights could be sold to a company that doesn’t even occupy the building.

But there are restrictions. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a tenant, has a lease clause barring the building from being named after another law firm. Estée Lauder has a similar restriction on renaming the building after other cosmetics companies.