Awesome.

[Jeremy Hogan]

I have to doubt that even a lawyer cares what a 2 1/2 year old girl does
with a logo. Well Disney lawyers would have her killed, but they're evil.

IANAL but...

It's fair use because:

-it does not commercially impact the original product
-it is not passed off as one's own creation (or has been heavily
recontextualized and comprises an original work)
-intent

But parody and fair use don't apply necessarily, since this is a corporate
mark. So...

Trademark law:

-it only superficially resembles the original mark
-it does not cause confusion in the mind of the consumer
-it is not used to represent a competing company/product in the same
industry
-intent

A (ahem) "good" lawyer would send a cease and desist, just in case, and
likely never even follow up, b/c that's what they do. "Good" trademark and
copyright lawyers like a good old fashioned chilling effect more than they
like litigation. Where they might--*gasp*--lose. In other words, even if a
lawyer says it's wrong, it doesn't mean it is anymore than it's right
becasue they don't say anything about it.

BTW, Penny Arcade could have won. They needed Shortcake's image of innocence
and manufactured air of wholesomeness in order to juxtapose it and deliver
"the shock of the unexpected" (from defense arguments in Disney v. the
crators of Mickey v. The Air Pirates.)

They backed down on the grounds of not caring enough of a shit to deal with
it. American Greetings was just about ot re-launch the brand, and would have
fought to the quick, and maybe even won, and set yet another horrible
precedent for frivolous suits.

--jeremy

On 3/15/06, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/15/06, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com> wrote:
> > And when a lawyer comes to me and says "this silly mockup on a website
> is
> > an improper use of our logo," I'm going to point them to this little law
> > called "fair use".  Specifically, to the "parody" clause.  Protected
> > speech under the US constitution, dontchaknow.
>
> what is being parodied here? I look at that and I see a parody of
> shadowman... not a parody of "fedora."  I mention it, because there
> are established limits on how protected mark A  can be used in a
> composition parodying protect mark B.  If he had made a parody of the
> fedora mark in the same style as his free-handed shadowman i think
> your lawyers wouldn't even have batted an eye.  As it stands, they
> might rapidly blink for a few seconds like they are staring into the
> sun when they see that image.
>
> A not completely unrelated situation occured between penny-arcade, a
> site that does nothing but parody as a genre, and american greetings
> the owner of the strawberry shortcake marks.  A non-lawyer's thoughts
> on the matter can be found
> at http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/002368.html
>
> -jef"Does the argument I made about the limitation on parody hold up?
> Who cares.. I got to make a contextual link to the censored
> penny-arcade comic... which is the real goal of every conversation I
> get into"spaleta
>
> --
> Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
> Fedora-marketing-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>
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