LEGALITIES ITSA & logos

LEGALITIES

ITSA & logos

This newsletter regularly reproduces the logos of organizations and agencies being reported (see above) as a way of giving readers an immediate sense of some of the major subject matter. It is a kind of graphical headline. And it’s also an illustrative/esthetic device to relieve the text, since we don’t yet run to that modern photography, half tones, lurid colors etc.

Most organizations like their logo reproduced, since it is a branding and marketing device, which they wish to be widely known. We’ve had people encourage us by sending along a “clearer version for next time” after the one we published was a bit fuzzy because we got it off a fax. But regardless, we can print logos for news purposes under “fair use” news doctrines, just as it is legally permissible to quote passages from a copyrighted article without being in breech of copyright, when the purpose is reportage or comment. Such a “fair use” right to use what is otherwise intellectual property is long established in law, as an essential component of freedom of speech and of the press.

Our reproduction of a logo in the context of a news report cannot possibly be construed as any kind of endorsement — by us or them. This is an independent newsletter and is not endorsed by anyone. We write this because we have just received a letter from lawyers for ITS America complaining about our “unauthorized use” of the ITSA logo. They asssert: “Any use of the ITSA logo brings with it implied endorsement of your organization’s activities.”

Fiddlesticks and poppycock, as my Aunt Jean would say.

Context is all important. Let it be known we have neither asked, nor received, permission to reproduce any logo or mark, because we don’t need permission to use them for the news purposes for which we have used them. No kind of endorsement is implied, and no reasonable person would find any skerrick of endorsement in the context of our reports.

Trademark law rightly restricts the misappropriation of intellectual property and protects the use of logos and marks from use by competitors. But we aren’t competing with ITSA. We are reporting on it.

It would be wrong to use someone’s logo to misrepresent something as an organization’s views, but we haven’t done that. The lawyers for ITSA end up threatening legal action and demand we sign, and return to them a promise that we won’t ever reproduce the ITSA logo or ‘mark’ again — in order to settle the matter “amicably.”

No way, guys. We’ll make our own decisions how we illustrate articles in this newsletter and we’ll exercise our fair use news rights under the law. But it’s good to know you’re reading the newsletter...but, heck, what’s this? We don’t seem to have you on our list as a paid subscriber. Off to them lawyas ag’in...

Contacts and sources

Here’s a serious point raised by someone mentioned as a contact, that deserves clarification. She was cited as a contact at the end of an article and she said we’d never spoken to her for the article and she was not our source. 100% correct. We hadn’t. And she was not a source for the article. Sources are sources. Contacts are contacts. Sources are sometimes mentioned in the body of our reports, sometimes not. The contacts are just that — contacts for you, the reader, to follow up with to gain further, usually official, information. They may, or may not be, one of the article’s sources.