[Foundation-l] Fair Use and Registered Trademarks

[Rowan Collins]

On 15/07/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Getting back to the topic, however, if something has passed into the
> public domain, can you use a trademark that is related to that
> copyrighted work?  For instance, if and when "Steamboat Willie" goes
> into the public domain (Disney fights real hard to keep that from
> happening), can you use Micky Mouse in a manner that the Walt Disney
> Corporation would find offensive?  Like wearing a swastika or burning a
> cross or flag?  Can you even refer to the movie clip as "Steamboat
> Willie"?  Is the name Disney even trademarked so can you even
> acknowledge that Walt Disney was one of the animators for that movie?

I won't spend too long on this point, because it's not entirely
on-topic, and I don't know in any depth or certainty, but I think this
is where things like defamation come in. If you implied that Disney
supported Nazism or some other "evil", they would presumably have the
right to sue you for the implication - and if you showed Mickey Mouse
doing so, they could reasonably argue that that's what you were doing.

More generally, though, trademarks are always so much more flexible
than other forms of "intellectual property" that I really don't know
what you could and couldn't do once Mickey Mouse was no longer
*copyrighted*, but still considered a *trademark*. [Of course, unlike
the Encyclopedia Britannica, you couldn't really use an image of
Mickey Mouse with the trademark removed, since Mickey Mouse *is* the
trademark]

-- 
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]