How aggressive does a business need to be at preventing customers from bringing alcohol on premises? I volunteer at a new 501c3 art studio in Washington state where you pay to have space to do art. The organization policy is no alcohol on the grounds unless we have a special event with a liquor license. Trouble is artists bring a wide variety of drinks and there are so many available on every end of the spectrum. Fermented tea now has some alcohol. It is hard to police when you don't know what is in drinks. My question is what are the laws regarding customers bringing in alcoholic beverages? Are there % limits? Who's to blame if we disallow it? Does it have to be posted (we are already ending up with a lot of postings)?
They need only take " reasonable measures", which is fairly subjective sounding... I know... But it just means that it's a fact dependent analysis taking into consideration all of the facts that are readily available. So, for example, it would be a different burden if you had 10,000 people coming, vs 10. If you post a sign saying no alcohol allowed on premises and you keep an eye out for blatant violations and deal w/ them accordingly you're fine. You're not duty bound to ensure that not a drop makes it in. It's basically meant to just keep you from serving it while not paying the higher licensing fee.
Short answer Sorry. Everything you want to do is completely illegal. Consider the time you have invested so far a learning experience. Very little of your work will be salvageable. You need to start over pretty much from scratch with an original visual and musical pallet only vaguely inspired by the original. If you don't, you will be sued for many, many different reasons and lose. Longer answer Intellectual Property Problems There are multiple intellectual property-like problems with your plan. If you use any registered trademarks (or unregistered claimed of trademark designed with the superscript "TM" by the restaurant) you are probably looking for trouble. If the architecture or anything in the restaurant is protected by copyright or a design patent, you are looking for trouble. The restaurant can probably claim "trade dress" protections of its "look and feel" to the extent that those elements are a consistent part of the restaurant's image and is distinctive. If individuals in the game correspond to individuals in real life from whom you have not received permission, you are probably engaged in tortious violation of that person's right of publicity. If you use music used in the restaurant without permission in the game, this is probably a violation of somebody's copyright unless you obtain a license (or statutory license for covers of music copyrighted by someone else). If you are a former employee of the restaurant, there may also be contractual limitations in disclosures of elements that are considered "trade secrets". Tort Law Problems In addition to intellectual property issues, there is a good chance that if the correspondence between the real restaurant and your game is close enough, and the game displays the restaurant in a negative light (perhaps partially due to video game hyperbole) that you will be sued (quite possibly successfully) for defamation, for "injurious falsehood", or for the tort of "false light" (if that privacy tort has been adopted in a state where the game is sold). Bottom Line: You Are Screwed If You Proceed Basically, if you can't obtain permission, it is a really bad idea to proceed according to your original plan and you will be successfully sued to no end. Moreover, even if you do win a lawsuit in the end, you will go broke trying to defend it and will be hopelessly distracted for years from your main business of selling video games. Options To Make Your Video Game Legal You can either parody the original (which is quite tricky), or you can follow the advice in the comment from @schizoid04 and change things to a similar degree to what you commonly see on television or in movies where they clearly don't have the licensing rights to the real thing. If the game uses the images in connection with culinary or political criticism it could also be protected, but this video game probably would not rise to that level for intellectual property purposes. Should I simply give the restaurant a different name? Should I feature the restaurant in a different city than where it really resides? What if I mirrored all of the architecture to be backwards like how people "Mirror" copyrighted video on youtube? None of these measures (or even all of them combined) go nearly far enough to be sufficient to ward off intellectual property or defamation-type lawsuits. You need to rebuild from scratch touching on some of the general ideas or cliches for this type of business, but none of the distinctive specifics that associate this particular business with your images.
Rather than deciding that a restaurant is a convenience store, the restaurant owner can, following the text that you quoted (&quot;unless the consumer specifically requests the single-use plastic straw&quot;), wait for the customer to request a straw, in which case they can give the customer a straw. If a restaurant owner decides to declare that it is a convenience store and not a restaurant, there could be unintended consquences, since (for examples) a convenience store can't serve a glass of beer.
If your app is published under US law, then the DMCA would apply, just as if it was a web site. The DMCA doesn't say anything about what particular technology the distributor is using. TO be protected by by the DMCA's &quot;safe harbor&quot; provision, you will need to include a notice in your app that you accept takedowns, and provide an address or method by which they can be sent, and an agent who will receive them. (You can be your own agent if you choose.) When and if you recieve a take down notice, you must check if it is valid in form. According to this Wikipedia article, a takedown notice must include: (i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. (ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site. (iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material. (iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted. (v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. (See the actual text of the relevant section of the law.) If you receive (through your designated agent) a valid takedown notice, you must promptly remove the content and notify the poster (or you can instruct to poster to remove it, but you must do so yourself if the poster does not). If the poster then files a valid counter notice (see the linked sources above) with your agent, you must notify the sender of the original notice, and if the sender does not notify you of a copyright suit filed within 10-14 days, you must restore the content. Provided that these rules are complied with, the host gets a 'safe harbor&quot; and cannot be sued for copyright infringement, nor for the act of taking down the content. I believe that the agent must be registered with the US copyright office. The courts have not ruled on just how quickly an ISP or other host must react to the takedown notice. It must be &quot;expeditious&quot;. Moreover, Under the DMCA (i) 1) (a) The host must have, post, and enforce a policy denying access to repeat infringers, or lose safe harbor protection. The text of the provision is: (i) Conditions for Eligibility. -(1)Accommodation of technology. —The limitations on liability established by this section shall apply to a service provider only if the service provider— --(A) has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers;
Arizona law operates in terms of "spirituous liquor", which is defined as containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume. You'd have to send the cheese to a lab to determine the actual alcohol content, but it is likely that the product has less than the threshold amount of alcohol. It is not clear why vanilla extract is not classified as a spirituous liquor, since it satisfies the definition (as a mixture of alcohol with another substance, and it is indeed capable of inducing intoxication).
You are referring to Michigan State Police v. Sitz 496 U.S. 444 (1990). It does not require or suggest a requirement of advance publication of any details regarding the checkpoints. The dissent mentions that "a sobriety checkpoint is usually operated at night at an unannounced location. Surprise is crucial to its method." This point was not countered or even mentioned by the majority. In this case, a state committee had created guidelines setting forth procedures governing checkpoint operations, site selection, and publicity. The mentions this as a background fact, but does not rely on the existence of these guidelines as a requirement for the constitutionality of checkpoint stops. It does contrast checkpoints with "roving patrol stops". Quoting from Martinez-Fuerte 428 U. S. 543 (1976), the majority in Sitz said: "at traffic checkpoints, the motorist can see that other vehicles are being stopped, he can see visible signs of the officers' authority, and he is much less likely to be frightened or annoyed by the intrusion". There are state guidelines, some states have constitutions prohibiting sobriety checkpoints (lots of case law at the state level regarding this), and some state legislatures have made these illegal. In Sitz, the checkpoints were being operated subject to guidelines developed by the Sobriety Checkpoint Advisory Committee (of the State Department of Police). Federally, the NHTSA has guidelines on visibility and publicity towards the goal of effectiveness.
Yes. There is no strict regulation of what kind of business can be operated out of a for profit entity in most jurisdictions, subject to some specific exceptions. In certain regulated industries, e.g. banking, pubic utilities, alcohol industry firms, firearms sales and manufacturing firms, marijuana industries, law firms, firms of medical doctors, there are limits on the scope of what can be in a single entity. But, these are exceptions to a permissive general rule.
I’m guessing you have seen a sign in a business that read - “Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone”. At least in the US, they do not need a reason as long as the reason isn’t unlawful discrimination. They can decide not to serve you.