• HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So IANAL but my brother used to do IP law before it broke him. The way he explained it to me was that it’s not that it’s a business decision, it’s that they can lose the trademark if they don’t try to defend it. So if something comes to their attention, they aren’t really allowed to pick and choose who gets to infringe on their IP rights.

    I’m sure there’s a better explanation out there but I’m a tax guy, but an IP guy.

    That being said, the situation you described (I am unfamiliar with the case) sounds like such bullshit. The point of trademark is to avoid confusion. Unless that daycare was in Anaheim, Orlando, or Burbank I wouldn’t assume any connection to Disney (and if it was in those cities I’d assume the connection was that they’d hired a Disney artist to paint their wall). There’s gotta be a fair use defense here.

    • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      it’s that they can lose the trademark if they don’t try to defend it

      So the copyright and trademark system needs to change then.

      Also, those laws were essentially ghostwritten by Disney and the like, so I very much doubt that wasn’t an intentional thing so they can go “look, we have to sue you, our hands are tied!”

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        To clarify, you don’t need to defend copyright to maintain it, only trademarks. They’re very different things. Copyright is meant to protect you from people just reprinting your stuff (and privacy). Trademarks are meant to protect the distinguishing features your company uses to separate it from other companies.

        • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Copyright, trademarks, etc. do nothing but hinder innovation and create wealth inequality.

          • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Copyright (and patents - they’re different, but have similar ideas behind them) were meant to be a compromise. Creator gets to profit from their idea for a predetermined time, with protection from the state, then when that time is up, it becomes owned by “the people” and therefore nobody’s use is any more legitimate than anyone else’s. But Disney broke copyright by extending it to its current ridiculous extent…

            So I guess what I’m saying is, as long as the period is short, it can be a net benefit - but when it’s life plus 75 years or whatever it is now, it stifles creativity.

        • query@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It doesn’t need to be stronger, fair use needs to be expanded and lawyers need to be fined for taking on and wasting court time with obviously unnecessary cases.

          Or just put everything into the public domain after 28 years.

    • WhipTheLlama@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      they can lose the trademark if they don’t try to defend it

      This is true, but that’s if another company is using a similar logo as their own. Like, if a pet store used the Mickey Mouse logo, of course they’re going to be sued.

      If a daycare uses Mickey Mouse to decorate their classroom, Disney doesn’t have to sue because the trademark isn’t be used separate from Disney. The Daycare, and kids, are using it because it’s Disney, so there is no confusion about trademark ownership.

      At the very least, Disney could simply write them a letter allowing them to use depictions of Disney characters inside the school so long as it’s not for advertising or commercial purposes and the art is done by a student or teacher.

    • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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      1 year ago

      A simple crease and desist letter surely suffice for this, right? No need to waste resource suing a daycare for copyright infringement?

      • Im_old@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        in case you haven’t seen the acronym before (it took me a minute the first time I saw it too!), it means “I Am Not A Lawyer”. It’s a disclaimer that the advice given is NOT legal advice.

        If your post was just a joke: a) I thought the same thing when I first saw that b) no kink shaming 😅

        • Rubanski@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          You could sue a random Lemmy user for seemingly giving legal advice? Or what’s the need for a disclaimer? That sounds so strange

          • ChiwaWithMujicanoHat@mujico.org
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            1 year ago

            This is used by non-lawyers who are seeking to avoid accusations of unauthorized practice of law and are not making any recommendation to the particular addressee of their remarks. -Wikipedia

            Basically it’s a disclaimer to avoid any potential issues, given how litigious some situations can get, it’s best to be overprotective with any potentially legal advice

          • Im_old@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            There’s PLENTY if people ready to sue left and right (and attorneys happy to take their money) at the drop of a hat if they feel they have been wronged because they can’t look at themselves in the mirror and say “yeah, I was an idiot on that one”.

            Have you looked at the “florida man” or “not the onion” communities? People are crazy.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      No really such thing as fair use in trademark but it’s definitely possible to not be an asshole about it. You can definitely allow use, the question is whether you assert control over use of the mark or not.

      You wouldn’t want to allow extreme cases (a daycare Disney-theming itself completely associating itself, unilaterally, with all your IP and by extension looking like a Disney-licensed and associated daycare) but “as minor part of a larger artwork, or a single mural of a single character not publicly visible” avoids damage to the mark’s image.

      From the other POV, as a daycare, you should only ever do murals of Mickey if he’s holding a giant cookie.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The standard for losing a trademark essentially boils down to “no reasonable person would expect the public to know it’s a trademark, so any infringement can be assumed to be accidental”. So things like dry ice, heroin, escalator, gasoline, trampoline, flip phone, and teleprompter. Common words where the fact that they were once trademarks is obscure trivia. The more commonly cited examples of genericized trademarks like Kleenex or Band-Aid are not actually genericized, that’s a myth, they’re in no danger of being genericized because people know they’re trademarks.

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You wrote some fuckery to reword “…they HAVE to sue a daycare for using its characters in a mural, they HAVE to in order to keep their other bullshit going.” with more corporate sympathy.

      Fuck Disney, fuck you, and fuck copyright law.

      It should be rewritten, and culture should be allowed to function normally again.

      • Killing_Spark@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        C’mon we are better than this here. Firstly be friendlier. Secondly they just tried to explain why, given the current legal system, sometimes a company has to do stuff that at first glance seems like a bad business decision.

        I agree that the system is flawed, and that IP laws need a big reformation, that’s the case pretty much worldwide I might add. But just describing the status quo is not “corporate sympathy” and attacking people for it is bad manners at least.

        Edit: Also, just for clarification, this whole issue is not copyright but trademark right related, which can be even stranger than copyright laws.

      • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Let me know if you ever register a trademark. I’ll be delighted to infringe on it day one so you can lose it. After all, according to you, defending it is utter bullshit.