Slashdot Mirror
Will Your Super Bowl Party Anger the Copyright Gods?
garg0yle writes "According to some folks, watching the Super Bowl on a television bigger than 55 inches is illegal. Is this true? Yes and no — long story short, if you're in a private residence you're probably okay, but if you're running a sports bar you may technically have to negotiate a license with the NFL. Just don't charge for food, or call it a 'Super Bowl' party, since the term itself is copyright."
We talked about this two years ago. Copyright still sucks, nothing new here.
P.S.: Amazingly, that was on February, 2nd 2008. I wonder if we will be talking about Yahoo considering an alliance with Google tomorrow!
If you can't mod them join them.
...call it a 'Super Bowl' party, since the term itself is copyright.
Summary fail. Perhaps you mean trademark?
There are sports nerds. The guys who memorize every stat for everyone on all thirty-something teams. I may not partake in that, but I will recognize it as something nerd. Of course, we are both going to be sued by the NFL for using the words in the comment title, so who cares? See you in court, co-defendant.
From the summary:
The article directly contradicts both of those claims.
It's one thing to comment without RTFA, but to submit without RTFA takes a special kind of stupid.
Just don't...call it a 'Super Bowl' party, since the term itself is copyright.
The term is not copyrighted. The term is trademarked.
The trademark status has advantages and disadvantages. Since it's been registered and in use for at least 5 years (since 1969 in fact), the trademark is much harder to invalidate, per 15 USC 1065. Unlike copyrights, trademarks really do last forever, given proper maintenance (yes, I realize that copyrights practically last forever too, but there are trademarks that are centuries old).
Some of the disadvantages of a trademark are that the remedies are weaker (no statutory damages) and the trademark holder must police the mark. You can't license it to just anybody. You have to maintain some control over the licensed good or service, typically in the form of quality standards. You also have to go after potential infringers. Failure to do so can lead to losing the mark.
It's that last requirement that is driving the NFL's actions here (well, that and the money to be made). Whether the law in fact requires them to be as strict about it as they are is another question, one that very few people on Slashdot are really competent to answer. Whether the law should require them to be so strict, however, is a different question and one that most of us probably agree on the answer to.
As a side note, footage of individual games is copyrighted. The NFL argues that footage of the game is licensed only for private viewing and not for commercial viewing, which is how they go after sports bars and the like. I would argue that if you put your game on the public airwaves, it should be fair game for live viewing. If they want to enter into a more restrictive license with the viewer they should put the game on pay per view, a premium channel, or a cable channel at the very least.
And then the NFL wanted to trademark the Big Game. Schools with their own Big Games got upset. The insanity continues.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.