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Canadian Government Controls Online Flag Displays
SiliconEntity writes: "According to this article from Matt Gaylor's Freematt's Alerts mailing list, the Canadian Government has trademarked the Canadian Flag and has the power to force Canadian citizens to remove the image from their web sites. The claim is made by one Jan Ovens, ovens.jan@tbs-sct.gc.ca, of the Federal Identity Program, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.
The site in question, a Canadian smokers' rights group, was forced to remove their image of the flag after Mr. Ovens contacted them. Ovens claims that the flag is a registered trademark of the Government of Canada and writes:
'The flag symbol is a global identifier of the Government of Canada. It is
used to identify federal institutions and is protected under the Trademarks
Act (Section 9 (1)(n)(iii) of the Act). The flag symbol was approved and
entered as an official mark of the Government of Canada on the Trademarks
Register held by the Canadian Trademarks Office, which is part of the
Canadian Intellectual Property Office at Industry Canada, on 30 September
1987.'
Are any other countries claiming the power to stop their citizens from showing the flag?"
http://www.pch.gc.ca/ceremonial-symb/images/canada _flag.gif
or in clickable form
If I display your flag upside-down, backwards, inverted with hot green and fuscia colors, what does it matter if it is outside of your country?
What about if I say it is "art"?
Yeah, right.
If a coutries flag - a symbol if its identity - isn't owned by the people then nothing is.
If I was a Canadian citizen I would be annoyed right now and if I was in the Canadian government I would be v.worried about keeping my job come the next election.
The Canadian Gov has a identifying mark whic is the word Canada with a cnaadian flag flying from the d, over the letter a. This Idnetifies gov departments and should not be used by others.
The Candian Flag however should be free for all citizens to use in a respectfull manner.
Guess that means the Maple Leafs are gonna have ta find a new logo!
I'm suing you for $10 to replace it, and $100,000 for the medical bills from literally laughing my ass off
Repeal the DMCA!
I don't know if Canadian trademark is the same as US, but in the US I don't think you can selectively uphold your trademark. You have to fight every instance of trademark infringement or the mark becomes diluted and you lose it. If Canadian trademark works the same way then I don't see how they can possibly uphold this. There must be thousands, if not millions, of Canadian citizens using the Canadian flag in some way or another without the government's authorization, and unless they intend to go after them all, I just don't see how this can work. But this is all contingent on Canadian © law working like US, so maybe it's completely wrong.
rooooar
...but I wish the U.S. did the same thing with its flag, if only to reduce the flow of cheesy "patriotic" items that have appeared since September 11. Profiting from tragedy is always ugly.
But anyway, if the U.S. or Canadian government got a royalty for every commercial use of its flag, it would have made a fortune. Canada can get a cut of the Maple Leafs' merchandise profits, the U.S. can get a cut of Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren's profits...
I'm laughing my ass off. At you. Does it bother you that the very concept of Quebec is joke to the rest of the world ? It's like when a comedian says the word "trailerpark"; no real punch line is needed, you just wait for him to stop talking, and then you start laughing.
I went to Montreal once. The only place that looked clean, and free of for lease signs and squeegee beggars, was the English part. The rest of it looked like you were well on your way towards neglecting every building until it fell down, carpetting every place where people congragate with cigarette butts, and generally turning your town into a piece of Africa. People also seem incapable of parking in a legal, regular fasion. At least the English still seem to be in charge of the subway, I believe that subway might be the nicest in this hemisphere (if it's beaten, surely it's by another Canadian one).
The one thing I can praise you LumberFrogs for is having cute girls who know how to dress right. Montreal was the only city I have ever been to where even the whores looked and dressed nice. But I was generally afraid to talk to any locals too much, even though this cutie did hit on me in a pancake house, because what I fell in love and got married ? Would all my daughters be whores, all my sons never have a job, smoke away all the money I give them on cigarettes and die of aids from having their fudge packed by rich Americans ?
I read somewhere that old-school racist English used to have the saying "Africa begins at Caleigh" but I never understood it until I saw Montreal.
I have to give you props on producing excellent hockey players, however.
Prohibited marks
I can't find the bit about enforcement, but I would assume that lack of enforcement equals acceptance until it is enforced.
--Dan
Well, probably moderators who smoke are going to lower my karma for this, but...
I think Canada's government may know the economic impact of smoking, not only healthy-wise but also related to lower production (smoke-breaks, more time sick, etc etc).
They probably wanted to do some pressure against this pro-smoke site. The only legal way they had was this.
And also, by using a flag, the smokers could lead some [stupid] people to think the official position of the government was being pro-smoker. Anyway, a flag gives a more "official" look on the site.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Will Canadian Websites switch to the red Canadabis Leaf flag?
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Ok, I have seen the light. Robin Williams is a prophet. All this trademark and patent stuff? It's all Canada's fault.
BLAME CANADA!!!
(hehehe)
Oh well.. I guess I'll have to declare a "Burn all canadian-flag-GIFs day". Why does this strike me as an incredibly stupid move from TBS ? I thought the flag was supposed to be an icon of pride, not shame.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
There is a symbol that the canadian government uses to signify a government building/web page/document etc. (http://www.gc.ca/images/canada.gif). Were they using this, or just the flag? If they were using the symbol, then I think this was reasonable.
Malcolm solves his problems with a chainsaw,
And he never has the same problem twice.
They say at the site
"We do not in any way represent the Canadian Government, any of its Departments, nor official policies. The contents of this website are solely the efforts and expressions of a volunteer, grassroots Chapter of FORCES International"
So what do they need the flag for anyway?
I have trademarked the flag of Libya and will sue everyone using the flag, and everyone using parts of the flag, and everyone using parts of the flag together with an alpha channel, and...
If the flag is the trademark of the government, do I have to pay some "royalties" if I got the international country sticker on my car?
oh! err... fck! I already do
life's not fair.
Can't someone submit "prior use"? ;-)
Flag info
"The maple leaf flag was raised for the first time at noon, February 15, 1965 during special ceremonies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa."
Mets-en 'sti!
Pis j'ai mauditement honte que le gouvernement fédéral ait pris possession du symbole de la feuille d'érable. C'était le symbole du canadien-français, sur une commande de la société Saint-Jean Batiste, tout comme le Ô Canada.
And if you guys want a badly translated version of what I just said, try the fish.
You can't take the sky from me...
Si t'étais réellement fier, tu saurais sûrement écrire "Baptiste" comme du monde?
La fierté et l'orthographe sont deux notions distinctes.
You can't take the sky from me...
Here is the trademark database record the article is refering to. The trademark consists of the flag plus some text beside it, not just the flag.
I worked for the Canadian Govt - the federal identity program is made to give the Canadian Govt one common look, and one this includes the web sites.. I think they are referring to the use of the flag as it is shown on all their sites.. I think the problem is that it may have resembled a govt site.. (fyi - There is a LOT of rules there, I dont think anyone here is worried about their freedom)
>laws such as those requiring all signs to be in
>French and English essentially designed to
>please the people of Quebec so that they don't
>secede-
Hey - that's a Quebec Provincial Law. The GOC didn't create Bill 101. The Province du Quebec did. It's there so that Quebecois culture (yes- very different from France) does not get assimilated into the Anglo culture.
What you're suggesting is bankruptcy. It's silly to think that one province can support itself without the help of the rest. Think of it- What would Minnesota do if it became it's own country?
Sheesh.
Hey - that's a Quebec Provincial Law. The GOC didn't create Bill 101. The Province du Quebec did. It's there so that Quebecois culture (yes- very different from France) does not get assimilated into the Anglo culture.
I do understand the purpose of the law. However, it is national. There are other provinces with large French speaking populations, but it is my personal belief that the Canadian government is more interested in holding onto what it has than protecting anyone's culture, heritage, or history.
What you're suggesting is bankruptcy. It's silly to think that one province can support itself without the help of the rest. Think of it- What would Minnesota do if it became it's own country?
Tell that to the guy who started this thread, a citizen of Quebec, who was stating his support of the province's secession. Or tell that to the 43% of Canada that has said it in fact supports Quebec becoming its own nation (as quoted from recent national polls conducted by the Canadian government). Or tell that to OVER HALF of Quebec, as indeed over half of its citizens want to secede. Also note, there's a lot more in Quebec than there is in Minnesota, industry-wise. It's also over twice the size of Minnesota. Now, Alaska becoming its own state, that's a better comparison. Even though Alaska is still smaller and less populated than Quebec.
"Anonymous cowards are just K-whores afraid of their accounts being modded down." - Bob the O (me)
Cierra el hocico hablamos inglés aqui.
Government of Canda
:-)
Alrighty that url above shows two 'flag symbols' that I can see them having problems with if in fact they were the 'flag symbol' described in the writeup.
I can't seem to find a pic of what they actually had there that was taken away.
On the top left we have the 'stylized flag -Government of Canada' logo and on the right, the 'Canada' with a flag flying from the 'd'
This is the icon referenced as a trademark with the 'Canadian Intellectual Property Office' at this URL:
Industry Canada?
It's worth noting that this last site, at the top, displays the 'stylized flag - Industry Canada' icon and the Government wide 'Canada' icon with the flag flying from the 'd' and over the 'a'
These marks are widely used and recognized - this has nothing to do with displaying the flag.
Thanks for your time
Searches using "Canada" and "Flag" or "Government" and "Canada" bring up a variety of "Flag and words" Trademarks (i.e. left 2/3's of the flag, followed by the words "Government of Canada / Gouvernment du Canada"), but no standalone flag.
Could this just be a government official being a bit presumptious and pushy?
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
Up until recently the govenment of India refused to allow ordinary citizens to fly the Indian flag.
I think the problem the Canadian Government had with this website, wasn't the use of the image of the Canadian Flag -- but with a particular style of Canadian Flag.
m
"The flag symbol is a global identifier of the Government of Canada. " http://www.forcesitaly.org/italy/assort/canada.ht
If you look on any government site, those two little red bars, with a maple leaf in the middle -- no background, no drop shadow, two color (as in http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/) is the base logo of all our government agencies.
I bet were the FORCES site to post a stylized Maple leaf or some gaudy animated gif of a waving Canadian flag -- the feds wouldn't care.
I don't think my government is saying nobody can use a maple leaf -- just not that particular style.
Grip
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
I totally disagree that the Canadian government should have exclusive rights to the Maple Leaf Flag; if they do own the trademark they certainly only enfroce it rarely (and then only for commercial use). Marks the government actively protects involve the flag, but also involve other things such as a stylised "Government of Canada" script or departmental names in that script. In any event, it would be in their best interests to make the flag freely available since it is one of the few unifying sybols of such a diverse and regionalised country, and the more it is used the more Canadians will feel part of Canada and not swallowed up by the USA. Considering the goverment had a fairly successful program promoting and giving away the Maple Leaf flag freely (real flags and graphics), I'd say they agree.
That being said, it appears that the site in question is still using a Maple Leaf Flag with the "Health Canada" department name beside it, in a script and style very similar to that actually used by Health Canada. The federal government is within their rights to go after a pro-smoking group that is displaying the Health Canada department logo in any manner.
...est devenu un symbole pour tous les Canadiens, comme les symboles nationaux souvent commencent dans une région et deviennent nationaux. Voici un sommaire pour la Feuille d'Erable.
Il est aussi normal que les symboles du Québec deviendraient des symboles pour le tout le Canada, parce que la vallée du St-Lawrence a été origialment appelé "le Canada", et historiquement ont été le coeur de notre nation. En fait, les efforts du Parti Québecois est d'adopter nouveaux symboles pour le Québec qui sont différents des symboles du Canada (ex. "Je je des souviens" au lieu "La Belle Province", la Fleur de Lys, etc..) C'est intéressant par ce que comme ca, ils mettre leurs dos sur les propres symbols historiques du Québec en même temps.
[traduction] The Maple leaf is now a symbol of all Canadians, and it is quite normal for a regional symbol to become the symbol of a nation. Here is a short summary for the Maple Leaf situation.
It's normal that symbols for Québec would become national symbols, since the valley of the St Lawrence was originally called the region of "Canada", and has historically been the heart of the nation. In fact, the efforts of the Parti Québecois are to adopt new symbols for Québec that are different from those of Canada (eg. new license plates, the Fleur de Lys instead of the Maple Leaf) This is interesting because in doing so they are turning their backs on the original symbols of Québec itself.
(Not often one gets to speak le Beau Langage on Slashdot!)
What rubbish. If you are talking about seperatists in Québec (a minority) they would be most happy to #1 Have their own military, #2 Have plans to adopt the US dollar after succession and #3 would wish to only have a Québec passport, and not the Canadian one at all. If you are talking about the majority of Quebeckers, they would wish to keep their Canadian passposrts, money, and military. And of course they want support from the rest of the country, who dosen't?
Please stay out of the Québec succession debate, as groundless anti-Québecois attitudes like that make the majority of the rest of Canadians look bad and only incite flame wars. You dork.
The "concept of Québec" is not any more of a joke that "the concept of Illinois" is. Both exist, and maybe one or the other may not be respectable in your little world, but they are to just about everyone else on Plaent Earth.
If the only place in Montréal that looked clean to you was the "English part" then you haven't seen 75% of the city. I could equally go to your city and massively generalise about the entire state populace from the slummy areas too. Where are you from Anonymous Coward, Detroit?
"where people congragate with cigarette butts, and generally turning your town into a piece of Africa" I imagine you mean that to be derogatory. Too bad you've probably never seen most of Africa, which is a beautiful place
"I read somewhere that old-school racist English used to have the saying "Africa begins at Caleigh" but I never understood it until I saw Montreal." So now you agree with these Old School Racists? Forget what state, what century are you from? And it's spelled "Calais"
No, the subway is not "run by the English" if in fact one can even meaningfully distinguish between anglophones and francophones. Most people in Montréal are bilingual, and many have been brought up in both languages so that they speak each equally fluently, with no accent on either. And ethnically, most are from non-British and non-French backgrounds, but speak both. So while civil employees of the Société de transport de Montréal work in french, your distinction of "the English" or "the French" running it is a meaningless distinction common to those that don't understand the way cultures & languages work.
"though this cutie did hit on me in a pancake house [...] Would all my daughters be whores, all my sons never have a job, smoke away all the money I give them on cigarettes and die of aids from having their fudge packed by rich Americans?" Ego, derision... Ohhh, and people wonder why many people in other countries have a bad opinion of American tourists...
Well, nice of you to give you $0.02 on the issue, too bad you don't seem to undertand it too well. Bill 101, the language law to which you refer, is a Québec provincial law that the federal Canadian goverment is not at all happy about. The Canadian government does have an official bilingualism policy, and enforces this to protect minority language rights (minority anglopone in Québec, and minority francophones in the rest of the country). These laws are not merely designed to please the people of Québec, but to protect the right to access to government servcies for english-speakers in Québec and the millions of Canadian french-speakers that have never lived in Québec at all.
And it's "Vive le Québec" - "Viva" is not french.
It wouldn't be at all workable... the animosity between federalist and seperatist sides is already just under the surface, and this would explode if Québec actually attempted to separate. Then there is the question of regions of Québec that are staunchly federalist and have said they will remain with Canada if Québec separates, and the Québec provincial government's reply that they would never allow regions to go if they wish. And the question that vast areas of the North of the province are populated mostly by natives that are also stongly federalist and would probably never agree to separate under any conditions. Plus the very thorny issue of Québec refusing to pay it's portion of the national debt or for federal properites in the province if they left ...an stance which most of the rest of Canada is almost violently opposed to. And really, these issues are only the tip of the iceberg, there are issues of minority language rights, native rights, freedom of movement from Ontario to the Atlantic Provinces which could be held hostage, more attempts at mutiny in the Canadian military incited by seperatists, etc etc.
In short, a separate Québec would never exist as peacefully as Alaska does with a friendly neighbour, because there would be great animosity. People refuse to realise there is the very real possibility of a dirty, extended breakup even involving military action on the North American continent. This would be a disaster for us all.
43% of Canadians support Québec separating? It'll be a cold day in hell before support reaches that level. And within Québec, it's LESS THAN HALF, otherwise they would have separated by now, since it's still a democratic country. Sure, it was a small margin last referendum, but still a greater margin than some people take to win. Interestingly, in the same way that Al Gore lost the US presidency, the current Québec provincial government won the last election due to the electoral system, even though they did not receive the most votes.
I imagine if you're all for Québec's right to self-determination, you're also supportive of the separation of the Second Republic of Texas, of Alaskan Nationhood, the restoration of the Sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii, the California Republic, Puerto Rican independence, and the formation of Cascadia from what's left of the United States of America.
The site in question, a Canadian smokers' rights group, was forced to remove their image of the flag after Mr. Ovens contacted them.
The Ministry of Health is at all out war with the Tobacco industry up here. You see it in posters, on TV, over the radio and on the Health Canada website. The site in question is run by their opponents.
My guess is FARCES[1], oops er, FORCES overstepped the boundaries of parody and deservedly got bitchslapped for it, not unlike another group that tried to emulate a Goverment site.
[1] I'm not a fan of Big Tobacco.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
Yes I agree that it is stupid(if true) that the Canadian Government tried to trademark the flag. Disney Corp owns the Mounties' image maybe the should try for our flag too.
On Quebec, a Quebec government official actaully complained during the last winter olympics that there were too many Canadian flags being flown by Canadians at the Olympics! That's like Texas complaing there were too many American flags and no Texas state flags.
Maybe 'God Takeru' wants another American Civil War. If the south wanted to separate why didn't the US and it's citizens let it?
Hey God Takeru didn't I see you driving a Ryder truck a few years ago?
The Canadian Flag (the one at hockey games, for example) is fine. Throw it all over the website if you want.
l ag big.jpg
The Government of Canada LOGOS are trademarks, like the McDonalds arches or any number of stylized symbols. MLB (American League) and the NFL also have "stars & stripes" logos, all protected. If some readers are confused, see the links:
Canada's flag (ok to use):
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/flag/images/canadaf
Trademarked Government Logo, examples:
http://canada.gc.ca/
The GC site has two examples of the trademarked logos:
1) Flag and text, in Canada's official font. The flag alone is fine, don't imitate the flag and text/font.
2)Canada logo with small flag above last "a". Again, the flag component is fine, but don't imitate the trademark.
Part of the problem is terminology used in the issue. The Government of Canada refers to a "flag symbol" which is NOT simply the flag alone.
The site refers simply to the "flag", but they really mean "flag symbol".
The site had an imitation of Health Canada's official, trademarked logo, in the form of:
Canada flag image/Health Canada (english, french in the modified Garramond font).
The font is also copy-protected, by the way; printers who have it to create GC documents cannot use it for any other purpose (it's convered by a SW license).
I beleive here in Australia it is actually illegal to fly either a state or the national flag unless youre part of the government... not that anyone takes notice of the government, they have to be identified somehow
Damn, I guess I'll have to remove the Canadian flag from my homepage.
This space left intentionally blank.
In the article federal spokesman Shawn Dearn stated "The flag symbol is two red stripes (or black if printed on a black-and-white printer) with an 11-point maple leaf centred between the stripes, The national flag, on the other hand, is two red stripes with a white square containing an 11-point red maple leaf in the centre. The difference arises only when the two are printed on non-white paper, or when words are placed next to the flag"
From the screenshot We can see that the flag is on a red background, which if it was a flag symbol, then the area around the maple leaf would be the lighter shade of red as the background.
This leads us to ask why did the cease and desist notice claim the image was a flag symbol? Can't the government employee charged with enforcement tell the difference?
From the cease and desist notice we see that there is no mention of the proximity of the flag and the page title. The issue at that point is the flag image.
Now the federal government changes it's story...
Ok, So you say it must be the text next to the flag. On the what's new page for the site... as taken from Google Cache, we can see the flag is in the left margin, and the text is centered. The text is not next to the flag and the goverment maintained it was also an infringement. And again, the background is red, so the image is a flag and not a flag symbol.
Doesn't hold water either. It's not a flag symbol and the placement of the text doesn't matter. The question remains... why was this site singled out? Is this what is possibly in store for anybody who becomes vocal about governmental policy?
Worse still is the fact that representatives of the government of Canada are making fraudulent claims of trademark infringement based on the fact that the government has chosen a logo, that can't be easily distinguished from a Canadian flag. So for all practicle purposes, the government has the exclusive rights to the display of the Canadian flag.
It is my contention that it is the government of Canada, which their flag look-a-like logo and their claim to exclusive rights to such, that are infringing on the trademark of the people of Canada, and the government of Canada should immediately cease and desist all use of this image.
I won't question that for a minute.
On the other hand, so does slashdot....