Sexy Sandwiches: PornHub Goes After Kebab Shop Over Signs, Logos

Trademark

from the meat-stick dept

One of the common tests for whether something is trademark infringement is whether or not the public will be confused as to association between the infringer and another trademark owner. This typically comes down to several factors, such as the similarity within the uses and, importantly, whether the two entities compete in the same marketplace.

It’s hard to imagine two marketplaces being further apart from one another than pornography and German sandwiches. Weird sentence, right? Well, MindGeek, the company that owns Pornhub among other sites, has sent cease and desist notices to a kebab shop in New York City over its branding.

As reported by Chelsea News, a kebab shop named Doner Haus recently found itself squarely in the sights of the Pornhub owner, not because of its name, but because of the font, style, and design of choice it used on display. Frequent visitors of the porn site – relax, there’s no judgement here. We know many of you continue to patronise the site – will know that the site’s trademark branding and its black, white, and yellow contrast that greets viewers on the landing page. In paying the full homage, the shop also has sexually suggestive statements plastered all over its windows, such as “Big Doner Energy” and “Bite Me, Lick Me, Eat Me Good”.

So, does the branding and signage actually call to mind the branding for Pornhub? Yes, absolutely.

MindGeek’s C&D indicates that the company will pursue legal action unless Doner Haus changes its branding, specifically suggesting that the public will be confused into thinking that Pornhub was somehow associated with the sandwich shop if it doesn’t.

And that’s the crux of the issue here: will they? Because of the branding, and some off-color suggestive signs on the storefront, could someone somehow think that Pornhub had expanded its business beyond adult videos into… German style foodstuffs? That seems like quite a leap and I frankly don’t believe it. Neither does Doner Haus’ attorneys.

Doner Haus and its attorney have more or less rubbished the Pornhub owner’s claims of alleged association, saying that there is no evidence that would suggest people would believe it was sponsored by the internet company. “Our client respects the trademark rights of others, and expects others to respect their rights to rightfully use trademarks, including trade dress, that do not infringe the rights of others,” the shop’s attorney wrote inresponse. “That being said, Döner Haus not only disagrees with your assessment of the alleged trade dress infringement of your client’s Pornhub trade dress, but considers the same to be so incredible as to be beyond the pale.”

And so now we wait to see if MindGeek is bluffing or really is going to pursue legal action against the restaurant. MindGeek certainly has the war chest to finance such a legal battle, of course.

But it would be hard for me to see them actually winning this battle in court. Sandwiches can be sexy, sure, but they aren’t sex.

Filed Under: likelihood of confusion, logos, trademark
Companies: doner haus, mindgeek, pornhub

Everyone's Overreacting To The Wrong Thing About Facebook (Briefly) Blocking Elizabeth Warren's Ads

Overhype

from the again-and-again dept

I’ve made it clear that I don’t think much of Elizabeth Warren’s big plan to “break up big tech,” which seemed not particularly well thought out and unlikely to accomplish its actual goals. Even so, I certainly cringed upon hearing the news that Facebook had blocked an ad that Warren’s team had taken to promote the plan. I mean, come on. Here is Warren, talking about how Facebook is too powerful and can potentially influence policy by choosing what it allows and what it doesn’t allow… and Facebook up and hands Warren the most beautiful gift she could ever hope for: blocking her own ad for her policy to break up Facebook. Basically everyone immediately spun the story as Facebook trying to censor this call to break up itself.

It sure looked bad.

Of course, the reality, again, is a lot more nuanced. And, while everyone will ignore this (and I’m sure some people will make bogus accusations in the comments), the reality is that this isn’t proof of Facebook’s nefarious attempts to censor people it doesn’t like or messages it doesn’t like. It’s proof of the impossibility of content moderation at scale. As Facebook explained, the original ad violated a Facebook policy that had nothing to do with the message it was sending: you’re apparently not allowed to use Facebook’s logo in an ad:

?We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo,” the spokesperson said. “In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads.?

This is, indeed, true. If you look at Facebook’s ad policies it shows the following:

You are, in fact, not allowed to use a Facebook logo in an ad. Warren’s ad violated that. Of course, in this context, it looks really, really bad. As Buzzfeed’s Ryan Mac noted, this policy — “which was ostensibly put in place for good reason, is interpreted without nuance.”

Yup. Except, here’s the thing, as we discussed on our podcast last year, it is literally impossible to invoke nuance when discussing moderation of content at scale. To handle the kind of scale that Facebook and other giant platforms deal with, you need to have thousands (and maybe tens of thousands) of content moderators, and they need to be trained in a manner that they will apply the same rules pretty consistently (which is already an impossible standard). In such a world, there is literally no room for nuance. A system that allows nuance is one that allows arbitrary decision making… leading to just more complaints of inconsistent content moderation.

And, frankly, for all of Warren’s attempt to frame this as evidence that Facebook has “too much power” and is “dominated by a single censor,” what actually played out suggests why that’s inaccurate. These ads weren’t getting much attention. Indeed, they had almost no money behind them. According to Buzzfeed, these ads weren’t designed to reach a wide audience:

Facebook?s ad archive shows that the four ads had less than $100 in backing each, with three garnering fewer than 1,000 impressions and one garnering between 1,000 and 5,000 impressions.

And then what happened? The ads got taken down, and rather being “censored,” the story went crazy viral through other sources, almost as if the Warren campaign maybe found some silly rule to violate just to make this kind of thing happen…. And, of course, the Streisand Effect then guaranteed that for basically a tiny ad spend, a ton more people now became aware of these ads.

I fully expect that the details and nuance here will be ignored by most — and we’ll keep hearing for months (or, possibly, years) about how this somehow “proves” Facebook either “censors critics” or is too dominant and can stifle a message. And, yet, all of the details show something very, very different. Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and when Facebook does (for totally different reasons) try to stifle a message (after receiving tons of pressure from people like Elizabeth Warren to better police political ads…), it suddenly became headline news across the political and tech news realms.

Again, there are all sorts of reasons to be concerned about Facebook’s market position. And I’d love to see more competition in the market. But, can we at least not jump on the easy narrative when it’s wrong, even if it “feels” good?

Filed Under: advertisements, antitrust, censorship, content moderation, elizabeth warren, logos, message, policies, power
Companies: facebook

Judge Refuses To Hand The Government Biker Gang's Trademark

Trademark

from the mongolian-beef dept

If we were ever to hand out some kind of award for a trademark dispute due to both its insanity and longevity, surely that award would go the US Government’s attempt to strip the Mongols, a motorcycle gang, of its trademark. This whole thing actually started way back in 2008, with the government arresting several Mongols members for all manner of crimes ranging from extortion to murder. On top of prosecuting these cases and the gang, it requested it be allowed to seize the Mongols trademark on its logo, reasoning that this would allow them to simply strip any members of any biker gear that displayed the logo, even though that isn’t what trademark allows one to do. This somehow continued several years later, when the remaining members of the gang claimed the group collectively owned the trademark in question, meaning that the government couldn’t simply take control of it.

And, amazingly, this whole thing continues to today. It looked for all the world that this case was finally going to wrap up with the trademark being handed over to the US Government. In a jury verdict, the jury had ordered exactly that to happen. To the suprise of many, however, the judge overseeing the case stepped in and disregarded that part of the judgement, arguing that it would violate the First Amendment.

Denying Mongol members the ability to display the logo on their leather riding jackets and elsewhere would overstep the right to free expression embedded in the 1st Amendment, as well as the 8th Amendment’s ban on excessive penalties, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter found.

“There is a realistic danger that the transfer of the rights associated with the symbol to the government will have a chilling effect,” Carter wrote.

The government’s request relied on likening the trademark the Mongols had on its iconography as property of the same kind as its guns and contraband, suggesting that the logo was a chief tool of a criminal enterprise. Forfeiture laws are not typically used in this way, and it was quite clear that the government was attempting to stretch all kinds of definitions as a way to cripple every last bit of a biker gang that is indeed quite infamous. Still, the judge rightly notes that the bar with regard to the First Amendment is quite high, and allowing the government to essentially strip speech in this way would be both unconstitutional and would create a chilling effect on speech more generally.

The judge said 1st Amendment issues were undeniably at play because the type of trademarks the Mongols own, called collective membership marks, don’t serve any commercial purpose but only help members to identify themselves as part of a group.

And because the jury had found the logo was tied directly to the conspiracy charge but not the murders and other violent crimes with which the club was accused of participating, Carter concluded forfeiting the trademarks would violate the Constitution’s 8th Amendment, which forbids the government from imposing excessive punishments.

Denying members control over the logo would be an “unjustified and grossly disproportionate” punishment, he wrote.

And, so, the gang gets to keep its logo, though the government has announced it may appeal this specific decision. It really shouldn’t, though. Already the biker gang has been convicted of multiple crimes, from rackateering to murder. Going after the trademark again, even after all of these years, is pretty clear overreach.

Filed Under: biker gang, crime, doj, logos, mongols, trademark

YM Inc. Beats Roots Inc. In Trademark Suit Over Two Logos That Don't Look Anything Alike

Trademark

from the cabin-fever dept

In far too many of the trademark disputes we cover here, those disputes center around two competing logos or trade dress that look nothing alike, save for one very generic component. To get a sense of what I mean, you can refer back to the Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals bullying a financial services company because its logo used a capital “W.” Or the time one sausage company sued another because both logos had, sigh, a pig in them.

Or, now, when clothier Roots Corp. tried to nullify a trademark held by YM, Inc. because both had clothing lines with logos that included log cabins.

Roots had applied to strike YM’s registered trademark for a logo that featured a cabin surrounded by two trees and the words “Cabin Fever” beneath it, arguing that it was invalid for several reasons. According to a federal court document, Roots said the logo was confusing with its existing trademarks, that the YM Inc. trademark was not distinctive, and that the mark was only being used on some of the goods listed in the application. YM disputed all of Roots’ arguments.

And it’s easy to understand why the moment you take a look at the two logos in question.

Here again we have one single aspect that can be said to be similar about each logo: both include a cabin set against trees. Beyond that, nothing else is similar. The cabins themselves aren’t similar. Neither are the trees. Nothing in the rest of the images — from colors to shapes to wording to font — is even remotely similar. It’s enough to make you wonder if any public confusion was really the worry here, or if this was just one rival clothing company trying to push around another.

It seems the judge overseeing the request had similar concerns.

In the end, Federal Court Justice George R. Locke dismissed Roots’ application to strike YM’s trademark registration, concluding that the rival’s mark “was not confusing” with any of the Roots’ cabin-related trademarks, despite some similarities in the trademark and products sold by both companies.

“The cabin image itself used in YM’s Cabin Fever Design Mark is not particularly similar to either of the cabin images used by Roots,” Locke wrote in his January 8 decision, adding that using an image of a cabin was “no more distinctive” than using the word cabin.

“The word ‘cabin’ suggests a small house in the woods, and trees are inherent in such an environment. It is not distinctive to incorporate trees in an image of a cabin.”

Roots also suggested that YM’s entire trademark should be cancelled because it had applied for the mark with far more market designations than it was in fact using. The judge disagreed, however, taking the much more common sense approach of simply limiting the trademark to the markets in which YM is using it, of which there are something like ten. This again seems to indicate that this is all simple bullying, rather than any true concern for customer confusion.

And so we end up with a good ruling, one which actually takes care to address the tests for trademark infringement rather than simply looking at two logos that both have log cabins and deciding that infringement must have occurred. It would have been nice for the legal staff at Roots to have taken such care as well.

Filed Under: cabin fever, clothing, log cabin, logos, trademark
Companies: roots inc., ym

Two Georgia Sausage Companies Battle Over Trademarked Logos That Aren't Particularly Similar

Trademark

from the sausage-party dept

We see a lot of dumb trademark lawsuits here at Techdirt, but the most frustrating of them is always those that assert similarities in trade dress when it’s plainly obvious that no such similarities exist. Even when afforded the greatest leeway for interpretation, there are times when one company will complain about the branding of another company that simply leaves you scratching your head.

A lawsuit filed by Stripling’s General Store against Carroll’s Sausage & Country Store is an exmaple of this.

Stripling’s General Store is suing Carroll’s Sausage & Country Store because it was using a “confusingly similar mark” to advertise its goods, according to the complaint filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

The general store also alleges unfair competition, false designation of origin and injury to its reputation.

Look, I could stretch this post out a bit with detailed language of what’s involved, but the fact is that Stripling is complaining that its logo and that of Carroll’s are too similar so as to mislead the public as to the origin of each’s products. Worth noting here is that Stripling fired off multiple C&Ds without receiving a response and that Carroll’s has taken no action to change its branding. Also notable is that Stripling is asking for all profits Carroll’s received while using this trade dress.

And, now, for the branding in quesiton.

It should be obvious just how different these logos are and, more importantly, how little confusion they are likely to create. After all, the only real similarity that is somewhat unique is the use of an image of a pig on each. The counter to that as an argument for uniqueness and confusion is: these are sausage companies. It would be odd if they didn’t use images of pigs in their logos. Beyond that, those images are different, as are the color schemes, the verbage, and the names of each source of goods on both logos, which are prominently displayed in both cases. To suggest anyone is going to be confused by any of this is more than a bit crazy.

But, with the explosion in permission culture in American business, we’ve now reached a point where sausage companies are fighting over the right to use the image of a pig in their logos. Great job, everyone!

Filed Under: georgia, logos, pigs, sausage, trademark
Companies: carroll's sausage and country store, stripling's general store

MLB Comes To Its Senses And Declines To Oppose Overwatch League Trademark

Trademark

from the intentional-walk dept

We recently discussed how Major League Baseball had asked for an extension with the USPTO so its legal staff could decide whether it wanted to oppose a trademark application for eSport organization Overwatch League’s new logo. The request was more than a little head-scratching for a variety of reasons. As we pointed out in that post, the two logos aren’t particularly similar and certainty don’t appear to give ground to any confusion among the public about any affiliation between the leagues.

Different color schemes, different fonts, and clearly identified names of the league on each logo didn’t give MLB much ammo for a trademark opposition. Add to that the plethora of sporting league logos done in a similar style that actually do use the same color scheme, yet don’t face aggression from MLB, and it raises the eyebrow as to why MLB’s lawyers wanted to even go so far as to ask for an extension over any of this.

Well, it seems that either MLB’s lawyers are Techdirt readers or they simply came to their senses (I choose to believe it’s the former), because the time to file an opposition has come and gone with no action taken on MLB’s side.

Major League Baseball has decided not to oppose Blizzard Entertainment’s OverwatchLeague trademark filing, per law firm Morrison / Lee. As part of the OWL’s trademark review process via the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, organizations have the opportunity to oppose trademarks—and earlier this month, the MLB was reportedly preparing a challenge, along with a request for a 90 day extension.

The deadline to file the challenge and extension, July 26, has now come and gone without issue. OWL’s trademark is presumably in place, and while it could still be challenged as a trademark infringement down the road, such a challenge is unlikely given the lack of current filing.

While MLB has been happy in the past to be the bully on trademark issues, it seems it decided even this one was too silly to take on. That doesn’t feel like it deserves applause as much as brief sigh of relief at one less dumb trademark issue I’d have to write about.

Filed Under: logos, overwatch, sports, trademark
Companies: blizzard, mlb

MLB Mulls Over Opposing Trademark For New Overwatch League Logo

Trademark

from the swing-and-a-miss dept

It’s no secret that Major League Baseball has proven themselves to be happy bullies regarding its trademarks. Between thinking it owns the letter ‘W‘, forgetting that fair use exists, and its decision to bully amateur baseball leagues, the legal staff for MLB has shown that they can produce some really head-scratching moments.

Which brings us to the present, in which Major League Baseball has asked for an extension to decide if it wants to oppose the new logo for Overwatch League, the eSports league dedicated to playing — you guessed it — Overwatch.

As noted in a post on the website of law firm Morrison / Lee, the Overwatch League’s logo was approved for a trademark on March 28. Under the standard practice of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, this meant that any other parties with trademarks of their own had one month to respond to the logo—either to oppose it outright or to request more time to be able to oppose—before the logo’s trademark would actually be registered. Just one day before the end of that 30-day window, MLB filed for a 90-day extension to investigate the likeness of the OverwatchLeague’s logo to its own and potentially oppose it. Their request was considered valid and they were granted the extension immediately.

The extension expires in mere days, so we’re all going to find out very soon if MLB thinks it should oppose the trademark for the following logo, helpfully placed next to the MLB logo so you can decide for yourself how confusing any of this is.

So, let’s just get the obvious out of the way: these logos look nothing alike and will not cause any confusion. Period. Other than having a white outline of a “player” of each sport separating two colors and some words on the bottom, there’s nothing even similar here. The colors are different, the outlines are different, the names of the leagues are both different and specifically descriptive. Confusion is simply not going to be a thing in this case.

But let’s say you’re not convinced. Fine. Please tell me if the following logo also confuses you.

Of course it doesn’t. The NBA uses a logo with the same style and yet MLB is not at their throats over it. That’s because this logo style for sports leagues is fairly standard and there hasn’t been issues with confusion before.

Perhaps as MLB’s legal staff considers whether to oppose Overwatch League’s logo, they’ll happen to come across this post. If they do, I have but one bit of advice: don’t.

Filed Under: logos, overwatch, sports, trademark
Companies: mlb, overwatch league

University Educates Student On How Everyone Will Abuse Trademark Law

Trademark

from the book-learnin dept

Institutions for higher education are no strangers to abusing trademark law, I suppose, what with Harvard one time looking to lock up all kinds of language, or the University of North Dakota bullying artists over a parody version of its defunct and abandoned sports team logo. But it sure seems to feel more egregious for a learning institution to blatantly bullshit one of its own students through trademark threats, which is exactly what Dixie State University did when it claimed a student’s parody of its sports logo was trademark infringement.

Dixie State University’s new logo has already created some controversy, but not because of the mascot itself. Rather, it was a Facebook post during last week’s 4/20 cannabis culture holiday that had school authorities scrambling to stop what they said was trademark infringement. DSU student Ridley Larsen, who is currently taking a semester off, had used a copy of the new Trailblazers mascot and edited it to show a marijuana joint held in the buffalo’s mouth and a play on the words by changing “Trailblazers” to “Trailblaze It” with 4/20 printed above the wording.

And here is the student-artist’s rendition in all of its hazy, smokey glory.

Not exactly Rembrandt, but then April 20th isn’t an art holiday, I suppose. Anyway, this seemingly innocent, if childish, rendition of the school’s logo was posted to Larsen’s Facebook page as a joke. From there, a handful of people shared it and a decent number of people saw it. Apparently some folks within the school came across it one way or another as well, because they then completely lost their minds and pulled out the threat-hammer.

DSU official then sent Larsen private messages on Facebook and through his Dixie email account letting him know he had infringed on the school’s trademark.

“It was just a courtesy thing. It wasn’t an official message from our legal counsel or anything like that,” Hall said. “It wasn’t necessarily the content, and obviously we’re good with free speech and that wasn’t our concern. It was just the trademark issue.”

The suggestion that this was all done as a courtesy is, to put it mildly, bison shit. The message demanded the image be taken down on all forms of social media. If Larsen didn’t comply, the message ensured him that his “trademark infringement” would be reported to the school’s lawyers, with the obvious legal threat implied. Larsen did as instructed and no further action was taken by the school.

But let’s not gloss over the fact that the threat is all based on lies used to bully a student at the school into the action it wanted. There is absolutely zero trademark infringement going on here. First, the image was not used in any kind of commercial way. Second, it is a clear case of parody of the original logo. And, finally, any school touting its own interest in free speech had damned well better have a better explanation for bullying and lying to one of its own students beyond, “This is just a trademark thing.” No it isn’t, it never was, and anyone purporting to have enough knowledge to even make such a claim would know as much.

Yet, as far as an education goes, Larsen certainly is getting one as far as trademark law and its common use as a bullying tactic is concerned. Welcome to the adult world, sir. It’s a silly, villainous place, I’m afraid.

Filed Under: logos, ridley larsen, trademark, trailblazers
Companies: dixie state university

Telekom Gets Smartwatch Maker To Change All Its Logos Because Magenta

Trademark

from the purple-productivity-eaters dept

While trademarks being granted for colors strikes me as a special brand of silly in general, there really must be something about the color purple and its associated shades that sparks protectionism. Purple/magenta has been the subject of trademark bullying from several entities in the past, including CraftsAmericana Group, T-Mobile, and Cadbury. What moves the needle on most of these stories from “trademark-gone-too-far” to “trademark bullying” is that these actions tend to be brought against other groups that aren’t even operating within the same industry as the offended. That’s key in trademark disputes where, in most cases, the two parties must be competing with one another for infringement to occur.

Well, T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, appears to be at it again, sending out threat letters to OXY, makers of a soon-to-be-launched smartwatch, all because the startup dared to use the color magenta in its logo. The company explained to the public why it had to change all of its branding on its website.

Let’s start at the beginning. On August 19th 2015, we filed a trademark for our OXY logo (see the image below) with the Intellectual Properties Office of the United Kingdom. Our registration included the colors pink (#E91E63) and blue-grey (#455A64) and we made sure that, within the classes we filed for (class 9 and class 25), there were no other trademarks interfering with our classification.

On November 3rd, 16 days before we expected the trademark to become official, we received a ‘notice of threatened opposition’ concerning our pending trademark. According to the IPO, it was issued by Deutsche Telekom AG. In addition to the official notice, we received a relatively ‘urgent’ sounding email from Telekom’s lawyer firm, Hogan Lovells International LLP.

OXY states that the notices it received from HLI LLP prohibit it from disclosing the reason for the opposition but that anyone looking into the matter between it and Deutsche Telekom would be able to guess why. That’s true, with a brief review of the prior OXY logo and that of Deutsche Telekom.

So, yeah, magenta again. But not really, as OXY registered its mark using a shade of pink, not magenta, and that difference means that holy shit can we all agree that trademarking colors like this is dumb now? OXY goes on to note that Deutsche Telekom has opposed the trademarks of other companies over the color magenta, but that at least most of the time its targets were in some way competing with it.

While it is debatable whether or not this behaviour is fair, the above mentioned entities (except Engadget) were arguably in direct competition with Deutsche Telekom AG. Plus, Deutsche Telekom AG is by far not the only company owning a color-related trademark and they are also not alone in filing corresponding lawsuits. But why did they want us to change our logo? We are making a smartwatch – nothing that would eventually compete with Telekom’s products and services.

That distinction would likely mean that OXY had a good case to defend itself on the merits. Unfortunately, as is the case in too many of these trademark bullying stories, fear and lack of resources made the smarter decision for OXY to simply be to cave and go through the hassle of changing all of its logo and marketing material to remove the offending pink/magenta.

After a few hours, we got very valuable feedback from our external advisors and started to slowly understand what was going on. Since we didn’t have the financial resources to fight Deutsche Telekom AG on this matter, and because we also didn’t want to just ignore them, we basically had two options left: We could either negotiate with Telekom to find a price for using the old logo, or we could change everything.

Last weekend, we had to change all logos and colors of the OXY brand, which included modifying over 25,000 image files and countless other design related properties. Besides substituting the colors in most of our design elements, we had to update all our social media channels, our website and our upcoming Indiegogo page. As you can probably imagine, it took us a while, and we didn’t really enjoy doing it.

All in the name of trademark, built to keep customers from being confused, while instead being used simply to push small new businesses around for no valid reason. Yay.

Filed Under: logos, magenta, smartwatch, trademark
Companies: deutsche telekom, oxy

Court Rules Gran Turismo Protected By 1st Amendment In Including Company Logos For Realism

Free Speech

from the track-speech dept

Ever since video games got to a point of enough realism, how those games depict real-life locations and real life “props” has become an interesting question due to, of course, trademark law. Electronic Arts recently stepped into this question, for entirely unrelated reasons, when it announced it was no longer going to ask for permission to depict realistic and branded weapons in its shooting games. The question has always been more prevalent in the world of sports games, however, with stadiums named for advertising partners and advertising depicted all over the stadiums and equipment within the sport.

Well, we’ve got another case of a video game producer attempting to rely on First Amendment protections to be able to depict a third party brand within its game, as Gran Turismo made use of Italian flooring company Virag’s logo for realistic effect. And, according to the outcome between Virag and Sony in California, the First Amendment wins.

Virag is an Italian flooring manufacturer — and it also sponsors car races. Its name and logo have appeared on tracks in Sony’s realism-obsessed Gran Turismo games, as seen in the image above, and the company sued Sony in California — but a judge just tossed out most of Virag’s claims.

With this order, the First Amendment status of video games as an expressive medium continues to be upheld. “Gran Turismo 5 and Gran Turismo 6 are expressive works that qualify for First Amendment protection,” judge Laurel Beeler wrote.

This is good news on several levels. To start, having a judge slap down an obnoxious attempt by a company to sue over the depiction of that company’s brand, essentially free advertising, is always welcome. Add to that the further cementing of video games as a medium of expressive art, something that really ought to have been settled in the minds of the masses by now. And, finally, anything that gives game developers a greater sense of freedom to pursue realism with less regard for the insane permission culture that has invaded the arts works for me as well.

As a few commentators have pointed out, Sony likely prevailed because the case was heard in the US, where we have fair use provisions with some actual teeth, compared with the EU where, if anything, the culture of permission is even greater. I would argue that if a region’s intellectual property law is such that companies feel emboldened to try to end what is essentially free advertising within art, some revisions to those laws are needed.

Filed Under: first amendment, gran turismo, logos, realism, video games
Companies: sony, virag