On 3/15/06, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk(a)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