Strange News Stories re VANOC and SITA

First, the CBC story on VANOC using "copyright" law to stop ticket resellers. The CBC reports that:

Organizers are also suing Coast2Coast for breaching copyright legislation by using the words Vancouver 2010 and Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

Without seeing the statement of claim, it rather sounds to me like the reporter is using the word "copyright" rather carelessly, as many reporters do. I strongly suspect that the law suit is based on the special sui generis statute known as C-47, which is a very twisted version of trade-marks law, if anything.

The other strange story is entitled Sita Sings the Copyright Blues, wherein it is reported that a film maker named Nin Paley reportedly paid $50,000 for what presumably is a synch license for some music, allowing for the production of 5,000 DVDs. That's $10 per DVD, an absolutely astonishing amount. The film maker is trying to raise money to get this back. All very strange indeed.

HK

Vanocuver 2010 Olympic Games and London 2012 Olympic Games

The legal and practical difficulties of stopping people from using the English language as intended (e.g. "Visit Vancouver in 2010", or "See Ya at the 2010 Games") will be almost as much fun to watch as the the 2010 Olympic Games themselves.

Beware of using any two expressions in Part 1 of this Schedule or any expression in Part 1 with any expression in Part 2.

And, of course, the very word OLYMPIC is a "prohibited mark" by virtue of s. 9(1)(n)(ii) of our Trade-marks Act and is also locked up tightly by the legislation itself along with a lot of other surprising things here and here.

Be careful of using any words in such a way as I have in the bolded words of this blog entry.

Apparently, legislation similar to Canada's C-47 exists in England, and is being flouted far and wide. The idea behind these types of laws is to stop people from using certain "expressions" in such a way that the public might think that the business's wares or services are somehow endorsed by the powers that be or that there is an association between the business and the powers that be.

A lot of lawyers will be looking for gold medals for creative challenges to the expected excesses of VANOC concerning the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

HK

VANOC's Excessive IP Efforts

There’s a big fluff over VANOC’s trade-mark application for WITH GLOWING HEARTS. See the Globe and Mail story, for which I was interviewed, here.

Far be it from me to defend the overly zealous - indeed excessive - Vancouver Olympic IP effort, but actually, it was a "normal" trade-mark application. However, enough defence. The application does have an abnormally excessive and absurd list of wares and services, especially considering the nature of VANOC and what the Olympics is all about.

The list includes everything from automobiles, to diesel fuel, to circuit breakers and pages and pages of other seemingly random stuff that suggests a massive merchandising and endorsement scheme afoot. But would anyone really

As for taking of public domain phrases for use as a trade-mark, I don't see a problem in principle.

If someone decided to sell cat food under the trade-mark RULE BRITANNIA, that might be silly from a business standpoint and self respecting cats might not eat it, it would be quite acceptable from a TM law standpoint.

The other interesting aspect of this is that when the reporter called me late the other night, I asked if he had googled WITH GLOWING HEARTS. He had not and we did it on the spot. The first hit was this lovely website for a small business in Stratford, Ont. that sells woollen clothing and appears to have prior use of this trade-mark for clothing.

Clothing. That could be a problem for VANOC. Fortunately, the little Stratford business, called WITH GLOWING HEARTS, and a URL with that same trade-mark has a very fine IP lawyer. So this could get very interesting.

HK