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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?"
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.
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.
Personally as a U.S. citizen I would much rather live with cheesy flag displays than have our government put yet another idiotic law on the books. Sure you are making light of the situation but do you really want another law too? There are way too many at this point in time. Way make more for worthless causes.