Can I use the government&#39;s seals and logos without its permission? Is it permissible to use a governmental seal for editorial purposes in a magazine? For example, in a news story about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, could I use ATF's logo to accompany the story?
Yes. The First Amendment permits you to use the seal of a government agency to illustrate a story about that government agency. The government can no more prohibit you from displaying its seals for expressive purposes than it can prohibit you from displaying its flag. The questions raised about possible trademark violations and implied endorsement are red herrings. Section 2(b) of the Lanham Act prohibits registering a trademark that &quot;consists of or comprises the flag or coat of arms or other insignia of the United States, or of any State or municipality,&quot; so the government therefore may not trademark its seals. In re City of Houston, 731 F.3d 1326, 1331 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (&quot;As the nature of the mark is not disputed in this appeal — Houston admits that its city seal is an insignia under § 2(b) of the Lanham Act — the Board properly affirmed the examining attorney's refusal to register Houston's city seal.&quot;) Even if the seal were a protected trademark, the context of its use -- in an editorial setting rather than for commercial purposes -- is protected by the First Amendment. For instance, in Renna v. Cty. of Union, N.J., 88 F. Supp. 3d 310, 323 (D.N.J. 2014), a county tried to stop a television host from using its seal in advertisements for a show about community affairs. The court noted first that the seal was not protected by trademark law, and that even if it was, the county's efforts to limit the host's expression would run afoul of the First Amendment: Consider that the First Amendment prohibits a State from criminalizing the desecration of the United States flag as a form of political protest. ... Should a county, by means of an artful extension of trademark law, be permitted to quash political expression that uses its Seal? I think such an extension would be both unwarranted and Constitutionally risky. The same is true of implied endorsements. The First Amendment does not permit the government to limit your expression because it thinks people might mistake it for government speech. For instance, Rothamel v. Fluvanna Cty., 810 F. Supp. 2d 771 (W.D. Va. 2011), a county government adopted a law &quot;prohibiting the display of the Fluvanna County seal unless expressly authorized by the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors.&quot; The law was prompted by concerns about a blogger who had been using the county's seal in stories about county government, and there were reports that some people thought the seal indicated that the stories were official county publications. When a blogger challenged the law, the federal court entered a permanent injunction against enforcing it: The County takes the position that the showing of the seal by private citizens is not a form of expression at all; rather, the seal is government property, like a government vehicle or other form of personal property. ... While the County is correct that Rothamel does not have the right to take possession of a physical seal owned by the County, the County cannot control all privately-owned images or representations of the seal simply by declaring an interest in managing its own property. The First Amendment requires a more specific and substantial interest in restricting speech than the broad desire to safeguard government property.
Yes, if you do not use the trademarked name. In the U.S. the graphical shape of fonts are not protected by copyright. See 37 CRF section 202.1 Typefaces are specifically excluded. Excluded are under (a) &quot;mere variations of typographic ornamentation,&quot; and (e) &quot;Typeface as typeface.&quot; The computer code that a font/typeface program uses to produce the shapes can be copyright. Importantly, fonts are protected by their trademarked names.
Not with that license Your post makes clear that you have a sports license, not a hunting license. In that case, it was delivered in accordance with R312-40 of the code de la sécurité intérieure: Peuvent être autorisés pour la pratique du tir sportif à acquérir et à détenir des armes, munitions et leurs éléments (...): 1° Les associations sportives agréées (...) 2° Les personnes majeures (...) Sauf dans le cadre des compétitions internationales, ces armes ne peuvent être utilisées que dans les stands de tir des associations mentionnées au 1° du présent article. A license to acquire and own arms, ammunitions and related elements (...), can be granted to: 1° Accredited sports associations (...) 2° People older than 18 (...) Except within the framework of international competitions, those weapons can only be used in shooting ranges of associations mentioned at 1°.
One big hole in any scheme that relies on copyright is that it could not preclude people talking about the previous content or talking about you. This is well established First Amendment law. For example, see Near v. Minnesota 283 U.S. 697 (1931), which holds that except in rare judicially established exceptions (relating to military information, obscenity, and inciting acts of violence), government censorship is unconstitutional. Thus, no statutory scheme could be used to prevent third parties who happened to have seen the material while it was freely available from re-iterating what they had seen, or talking about it, or talking about the author (you). People could even reproduce portions of the published content. Some types of reproduction would be protected as fair use in the US, especially if the reproduction is for the purpose of criticism. (17 USC 107, and this previous Law.SE answer) The closest approach would be to protect your work as trade secret, making sure that anyone that you share it with agrees to non-disclosure. But, if you "publish unique content under this pseudonym" there is no way to "arbitrarily or wholly revoke discussion about that content". If the cat gets out of the bag, while you may have remedies against the person who violated the non-disclosure agreement, you would not be able to prevent third-party discussion or reproduction.
I know of no legal restrictions on using the title of Doctor in the United states. I know next to nothing about Canadian law and can't speak on that. Falsely claiming to have a license to practice medicine is probably illegal, depending on circumstances, and practicing medicine without a license is most certainly illegal, and there a numerous federal and state laws that would apply. But simply styling one's self as Dr. is unlikely to be held by a court as a claim to hold a medical license, or a particular degree. It's, of course, misleading and generally frowned to use the Dr. prefix unless one has earned an MD or PhD. Some holders of honorary doctorates use it as well, though some debate whether that's acceptable or not.
It depends. Symbols which are not entitled to trademark protection in a market, usually because they are merely descriptive or generic or functional, are in the public domain and may be used by anyone, but a person using a descriptive or generic symbol can't prevent someone else from using the same symbol to promote their own business. For example, I can use the scales of justice symbol to promote my law practice on my law firm website. But, since that symbol is a generic one in the law firm market, I can't sue a competing law firm from using the same symbol on their website. The essence of a protectable trademark that an owner of can legally exclude competing firms in the same market from using, is that your firm manages to infuse into the distinctive affectation for which trademark protection is claimed with what is called "secondary meaning" to the words or image or other manifestation of the trademark when it is used in the market where the owner of the mark wants to obtain trademark protection. For example, descriptive trademarks are not eligible for trademark protection and are instead in the public domain and can be used by anyone in a market where the mark is descriptive. You can't gain a legally protected right to use the word "liquor" to describe a business that is engaged in selling liquor, and you can't gain a legally protected right to use the words "doughnut shop" for a business that sells doughnuts. But, if you use the words "doughnut shop" to describe a business that sells liquor or bras, rather than doughnuts, and those words come to be associated in the mind of the public with your particular chain of liquor stores or lingerie stores, then the words "doughnut shop" have acquired a "secondary meaning" which can be legally protected by trademark law allowing you to deny other businesses the right to use that trademark in the economic market where it has acquired a secondary meaning. (The scope of an economic market can be both geographic and conceptual related to the nature of the products sold. The manner in which an economic market is determined for a mark is beyond the scope of this answer or the original question.) The analysis with respect to symbols is analogous. You can't gain legal protections for using a common symbol in a manner that merely conveys its pre-existing common meaning. For example, if you use the hashtag sign # to mean "number" or "pound", that probably cannot be legally protected by trademark law. But, suppose that one particular firm (e.g. Twitter) uses the hashtag sign in a novel sense associated exclusively with a service that this particular firm provides, in a manner that is not semantically derived from its pre-existing meanings. In that situation, the firm might very well be permitted to claim trademark protection for the use of that common symbol in this new sense that has a "secondary meaning", which associates that symbol in a certain context exclusively with that firm, in the market where that firm does business. Similarly, you could probably not gain trademark protection for the common highway "yield sign" design to mean "yield" or be careful or some other similar semantic meaning. But, if you used the common highway yield sign to sell spaceships, and people came to associate that symbol with the spaceships sold by your particular firm, rather than with spaceships in general, you might be able to secure trademark protection for the yield sign symbol in that marketplace. It is easier to develop a "secondary meaning" for a distinctive and particular stylized presentation of either words in a particular script, or a variation on what would otherwise be a common symbol, than it is to develop a "secondary meaning" for generic words or a generic symbol that is has an existing meaning in other contexts. For example, while Apple could probably not have claimed trademark protection for an image of a clock spinning clockwise while the user has to wait while the computer is thinking about something, Apple's distinctive variant of this image (which some people call the "pinwheel of death") might very well be eligible for trademark protection.' The AppleOS pinwheel of death
Yes. This is legal and it is done routinely. It is called executing a document in counterparts. To be clear, however, as the language of the question is ambiguous on this point, each signature would have to be contemporaneously notarized by the person notarizing that particular signature. In each case that a notarization took place outside the country where the Power of Attorney is to be utilized, normally, it would be necessary to also obtain an apostille for that notarization. An apostille is an official declaration of a designated official in the country of notarization that the notary of the signature in question was, in fact, a notary in good standing at the time that the notarization was done.
Generally speaking, it is illegal for you to do this. Copyright gives the creator of the image the exclusive right to copy it, and just making copies to send to other people is probably not going to be fair use. Making copies without a license from the copyright holder would therefore be copyright infringement. Are there likely to be any consequences for doing this? Probably not.