At 7:52 PM -0400 7/31/00, Damian Smart wrote:
>At 03:55 PM 7/31/00 -0700, Alec A. Burkhardt wrote:
>>trademarks is the advertising one; obviously that doesn't bother you. As
>>Ryan has already pointed out, the use of trademarks within a product is
>>NOT something permitted by trademark law.
>
>That's something I don't quite get. A _lot_ of gaming products use
>brand names in them. The Shadowrun book I have handy has trademarks
>like Radio Shack, Chrysler, Remington and Cessna, to get a wide
>range of examples. I find it hard to believe that all these
>products went out of their way to obtain individual permission for
>all the trademarks they use. As far as I understand trademark law
>(which is obviously not a whole lot), use is prohibited only in
>cases where such use would tarnish, confuse, or dilute the trademark.
In "Hot Rods&Gun Bunnies", the guns section lists a generic gun type
"Light Pistol", and then lists a number of real-world guns as
'example'. Guns, Guns, Guns lists MANY real-world weapons as examples.
Trademarks cannot be used to silence all uses of the name. A novel
with the sentence "The brutal serial killer, fresh from his bloody
spree, chugged down his can of Coca Cola and then stepped into his
Ford, plugging a Jethro Tull CD into his Sony CD player as he
laughingly thought about the vicious murder he committed." cannot be
suppressed or censored by any form of 'trademark' law known to man.
Not even if the next sentence reads "Later, he went on to his weekly
Dungeons&Dragons game, where he played a lawful good Knight of
Solamnia in the world of Dragonlance."
Check out any Gibson book for a huge list of trademarks used without
permission and in derogatory ways. For that matter, check out 'Dave
Barrys Book of Bad Songs", which quotes song lyrics and then lists in
the back which lyrics were used without permission.
-------------
For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
