Morning Brew: August 9th, 2007

<p>That is a public relations nightmare for J&amp;J.&;nbsp; I&#39;m pretty sure that the media will report about a boycot of J&amp;J because what some underworked lawyers are doing on behalf of J&amp;J.<;/p><p>As for green plates.&nbsp; Great going.<br /><br />What about what BC and Quebuec are doing.&nbsp; Remove PST on bike goods, or duplicate Quebec&#39;s 4000km of bike trail www.routeverte.com or force<br />the proposed incerator plans (Haminton &amp; Durham) to place less pollution in the air than than the alternative (landfill).<br /><br />McGuinty,&nbsp; thank you for opening up landfill space in Ontario again.&nbsp; Harris wouldn&#39;t do so and forced us to ship the garbage outta here.<br /><br />But green plates and more perks for low emissions, isn&#39;t what the world needs.&nbsp; It needs zero emmisions.</p>

<p>Diane, you are the one who is misinformed, J&amp;J&#39;s use of the red cross as a registered trademark pre-dates the creation of the Geneva convention symbol by a long time. It has always been known that J&amp;J retains a legal right to use the red cross logo but by agreement they are to limit it&#39;s use to packaging for bandages only, which is what the trademark originally covered.</p><p>It&#39;s kind of funny to see this because the red cross has always been very aggressive and very litigeous with anyone attempting to use the red cross symbol going so far as trying to sue artists who have used it in art works. </p><p>I&#39;m kind of with J&amp;J here, they allowed the Red Cross to adopt their trademark and did not sue them decades ago when they could have for all the right reasons and the red cross repays nearly a centrury of support by marketing products with the logo on it. </p><p>&nbsp;Even if J&amp;J doesn&#39;t have a legal claim I think this is a bad thing for the Red Cross to be doing, using the logo on products they are selling for fundraising purposes dilutes the message that the red cross symbol stands exclusively for protected humanitarian items and facilities. </p><p>&nbsp;</p>

It would be interesting, if there were some kind of disaster at a J&amp;J facility. and J&amp;J lawyers, execs and employees&nbsp;were in need of someone&#39;s services for aid and relief. Someone like, say, oh, I don&#39;t know, I&#39;m just ball-parking here, I know, let&#39;s toss this one out there...the Red Cross.&nbsp; What&#39;s next,&nbsp;maybe Coca-Cola will sue the fire department for painting their trucks red (and yes, Coke has a patent on the color of their cans, so does Pepsi.)

<p>The Wikepedia article is somewhat incomplete (gasp, you say, Wikepedia inaccurate? who knew), remember in this case we are talking about US law and the US didn&#39;t ratify the Geneva conventions until&nbsp; 1888 and&nbsp; didn&#39;t&nbsp; grant protection to the Greek Red Cross until 1905. </p><p>&nbsp;A more complete and accurate history of the issue is available here on the bottom half of the page.</p><p>&nbsp;http://www.redcrosselmira.org/document.htm<;/p><p>While J&amp;J may arguably be mistaken in some of their assertions I remain convinced that the Red Cross is wrong to be selling or licensing others to sell any products with the&nbsp; Greek Rd Cross logo on it, they are basically breaking their own rules for use of the symbol. </p>

<p>No, Chester Pape, we are talking about international law governing an international order, and about international copyright law (which the U.S. embraces and extends).</p><p>And your link to the local Elmira chapter of the American Red Cross is hardly more authoritative&nbsp; than IORC or Johnson&amp;Johnson themselves.</p><p>Furthermore, nothing in your response addresses my point that you are wrong to assert that&nbsp; &quot;J&amp;J&#39;s use of the red cross as a registered trademark pre-dates the creation of the Geneva convention symbol by a long time&quot;. This simply isn&#39;t true.</p><p>In fact, I suspect that this whole story is false. Has anyone seen a press release from either J&amp;J or the IORC on this issue?</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Yes I was technically incorrect.&nbsp;<br /> </p><p>However, this is a legal dispute between the ARC and JNJ in US courts and&nbsp; under US trademark law. As in many other areas our friends south of the border don&#39;t necessarily fully enact international law in their legislation and this is one of those cases. </p><p>There are press releases on JNJ and the ARC&#39;s web sites. &nbsp;</p><p>I retain my position that by licensing the red cross symbol to be sold on commercial products even if it is for fundraising purposes that they themselves are in voilation of the ICRC policies, the spirit of the Geneva conventions and US criminal law that protects the red cross symbol.</p><p>I&#39;m not convinced that it&#39;s really JNJ&#39;s place to be raising the issue and certainly it appears to be a PR disaster on their part.&nbsp;</p>

While this whole affair seems rather petty at first glance, there may be some truly valid reasons for their actions.

While not an Intellectual Property lawyer, I think they may be trying to prevent the "Red Cross" mark from becoming genericized, possibly causing (the perhaps permanent) loss of the right to exclusively use the mark.

Wikipedia has an entry under "genericized trademark" that is, at a minimum, interesting to read.

Whether the red cross logo or the "Red Cross" wordmark is at the heart of the issue is difficult to know, for me anyway.

I believe I read somewhere that the area of Intellectual Property is the fastest growing area of law at this time.

Trying to understand this kind of thing makes me think of another word -- "arcane". I guess if what I read is true, then less so all of the time.

Any IP experts out there? My skull hurts.