Poppycock

A bit of a brouhaha has erupted here in the blogosphere over the poppy of all things. In a nutshell, Pierre Bourque (one of my favourite pundits by the way) used an image of the poppy on his website Bourque Newswatch. This prompted an email from the Royal Canadian Legion asking him to remove the poppy as they own the trademark to it. Bourque complied and has since replaced the image with one of a British poppy.

This is somewhat of a tricky matter. Legally, the RCL was well within its rights. If I owned a particular image I wouldn't want everybody and his dog using it either. I also understand the need to protect said image from a legal standpoint. What I mean is, in order to protect an image you need to take the necessary steps to do so in every case. In other words, you can't ignore the misuse of your image by x number of persons than expect to protect it in a particular instance. When you go to court, you would of course show the steps you took to protect your image in every instance where you found an offender. But if you take Bob to court for example for using your image without permission and he provides evidence that you ignored the unauthorized use of the image in 10,000 other cases, well it just makes it very difficult for you to defend. So from that perspective I understand.

However what I don't understand is why the RCL chose to handle this situation the way they did. Copyright lawyer Ted Yoo even went so far as to say the RCL would have more than likely allowed Bourque to use it if he asked. Then why didn't they make that clear in the email they sent to Bourque instead of demanding its removal? The problem is when you come off as the heavy you lose respect. They could have easily explained the situation to Bourque insofar as their legal obligations to protect their image are concerned and ask that he request permission.

Of course this entire fiasco could have been avoided altogether if the RCL made it publicly known that they own the trademark. Nowhere on the RCL website does it say the image of the poppy is a registered trademark. Who the heck could have known such a common image was branded by someone? I certainly didn't.

Subsequently Bourque removed the image and replaced it with the image of a British poppy. Incidentally, the Royal British Legion actively encourages people to use its version of the poppy image.

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