“Ludicrous and Arrogant”
That might be the new HRD tagline
]]>Good God. Ask a Lawyer a question …
And “CubsFan” runs one of the best Cubbie blogs on the internet, ripe with sarcastic humor. But since he didn’t link to it …
]]>You guys aren’t going to live long as Cubs followers without picking up a sense of humor.
]]>This would be a copyright issue, as the claim would be that the Cubs stole your original creative work (assuming the preliminary issue as to whether a crude photoshop would qualify as original enough to be protected under copyright). You don’t have to designate or register original work to benefit from copyright, but of course registration assists in establishing a first date of creation.
And timing is a critical element here. If the Cubs have proof that they were working on this design prior to the HRD posting, you’re toast. Of course, your post came up pretty close to the signing, and timing is documented by the date of the post, which clearly predated the Cubbos. So, you’ve got that going for you.
The other problem you’re going to face, though, is proving that HRD is the source of the design for Cub’s marketing and not that there was accidental duplication. This is analgous to the cases where a screenwriter sues after some hit movie seem to track their original screenplay. Most of those cases go down to defeat, usually because the plots/characters/etc. aren’t so unique that a court can’t find accidental duplication (Art Buchwald’s Coming to America suit is one of the few that succeeded, and there wer some pretty unique facts there). Here, the use of the rising sun flag with a Japanese star is probably not going to be unique enough to withstand a finding of accidental duplication – although the positioning of the Cubs logo is a little suspect, the placement of the circular Cubs logo in place of the circular rising sun again may be viewed as a fairly logical creative step, and not one that couldn’t have happened without viewing the orignial work.
So in short – you’re case may survive a motion to dismiss but would probably not survive a motion for summary judgment absent discovery of some smoking gun (e-mail: “Hey, Marty, check out HRD today – we should totally use that!”). On the bright side, you may not want to be tagged as the creator of a graphical design that incorporates the Japanese battle flag and pisses off all the, Filipinos, Chinese and WWII-era Americans in the greater Chicago area.
In short, therefore, these are very difficult cases to prove … and therefore win.
]]>Your site seems just fine, but to presume that the the Cubs’ ad firm actually stole your idea stealing from you is ludicrous and arrogant. Sadly, you seem to be serious.
]]>And I’m sure you got permission from MLB and the team to use the Cubs logo in your rendering? Right?
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