“Gators, Noles Take Teams To School Over Logos”

 The University of Florida is chomping mad. And Florida State is on the warpath.  The focus of their aggression? High school athletic departments the universities believe are infringing upon their Gator and Seminole logos.

Last week, Florida sent letters to two schools in Palm Beach County – both nicknamed the Gators – informing them they must change their logos because of trademark violations.

In August, Florida State contacted Southeast High School in Bradenton – the Seminoles – for the same reason.

Springfield Wildcat archives on school trademark disputes here.

 

NY Times Freakonomics Blog: Copyright and Football:

The theory behind copyright is simple – if we allow anyone to copy a good new idea, then no one will come up with the next one.  The theory makes perfect sense – in theory.  In previous posts, however, we have described how fashion designers, chefs, comedians and pornographers all continue to create, even though others are free to copy their fashion designs, recipes, jokes, and . . . images.  In this post, we’ll take a look at something different: football.

I’m favorably disposed towards the authors’ argument that appropriate IP protection should be considered in an industry-specific context, however this struck me as a somewhat superficial column. The authors don’t highlight sufficiently that they are analyzing non-commercial behavior, specifically strategic behavior in the GAME of football (as opposed to the commercial activity of providing the entertainment service of football). And yet, even in this non-commercial domain,  there is still (private, contractual) IP protection encoded in the rules of NFL football – namely, trade secret protection.  Recall the New England Patriots getting caught in SpyGate.

And it never helps one’s credibility to make a major (from the point of view of an IP lawyer) mistake in the first sentence – copyright doesn’t protect against the copying of ideas but against the copying of the specific execution of ideas.

Dark Patterns:

This pattern library is dedicated to Dark Patterns: user interfaces that have been designed to trick users into doing things they wouldn’t otherwise have done.

Normally when you think of “bad design”, you think of laziness or mistakes. These are known as design anti-patterns. Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind.

The purpose of this site is to catalogue various common types of Dark Pattern, and to name and shame organizations that use them.

WSJ: Lars Johnson Has Goats on His Roof And a Stable of Lawyers to Prove It:

Lars Johnson is proud of his restaurant’s Swedish-meatball sandwich and pickled herring. But the signature offering at his Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant isn’t on the menu; it’s the goats grazing on the grass-covered roof.

Any other business thinking of putting goats on the roof will have Mr. Johnson’s lawyers to contend with.

My friend Tom writes:

Pepsi is running an ad with War’s “Why can’t we be friends?” War is suing them for 10M saying Pepsi didn’t secure the rights.  If you were going to steal a song, why would you steal from a group called War?

Excellent point Tom, and love to Andi.  Although some articles have described the lawsuit as a copyright suit, the complaint doesn’t mention copyright but sounds in breach of contract, right of publicity and trademark.

When using an ‘original’ recording for a commercial, one needs authorization from the owner of the copyright of the composition and of the recording.  It would seem to be the case that the plaintiffs here are neither.  So Pepsi may well have ‘cleared the rights’ to the song, we don’t know.

However, what’s the breach of contract action about? Plaintiffs allege that collective bargaining agreements with performing artists unions SAG and AFTRA obligate the filmmaker to contract with the recording artists, apart from copyright considerations.  Without speaking directly to Pepsi’s situation, if a filmmaker uses a ‘sound-alike’ recording, then that would appear to remove the need to (1) obtain authorization from the owner of the copyright in the ‘original’ performance; and (2) seem to resolve the SAF/AFTRA issue.  Of course, if Pepsi used the original, then there may be SAG/AFTRA issue.  This isn’t my specialty – if it’s yours, please leave a comment.

As to rights of publicity, it strikes me as odd for a group of people to assert a right of publicity.  Don’t you have to be a person to have a persona?  Trademark law would seem to be the proper avenue for groups to bring false endorsement claims.

There have been right of publicity/trademark cases arguing that a ‘soundalike’ recording implies endorsement by the original artist.  There is similarity here to the Romantics v Activision case, which is thoroughly discussed, along with the Tom Waits and Bette Midler cases, by Prof. Tushnet here.