NFL Claims the Fleur-De-Lis, They Guarantee 26
margaret writes "Now that hell has frozen over and the New Orleans Saints are amazingly good, the NFL has decided to start issuing cease and desist letters for use of the fleur-de-lis, a symbol dating back to the 12th century which has long been ubiquitous in Louisiana culture. Hell, it's on the official city flag, and Quebec's flag too — is the NFL going to go after the Canadians next?"
Boy Scouts (Score:3, Informative)
And it has been the symbol of world Boy Scouts for over 100 years. Will the NFL go after them too?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
But the Boy Scouts date to 1913.
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Yes, and the NFL never officially used it or claimed it until now. Fail.
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Actually 1907 is considered the beginning of the scout movement. But I suppose it took a few years for the Americans to join this "little" club a retired british general started.
for further reading: http://scout.org/ [scout.org] and of course http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Organization_of_the_Scout_Movement [wikipedia.org]
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Big hunky athletic types who like to dress up in armour plate and romp around nekked in rooms with 47 other like-minded (for typically small values of "mind") males, and now they're going after Boy Scouts ...
Why do I find myself less than surprised.
Bunch of closeted poofs, the lot of them. (No disrespect intended to proper un-closeted poofs intended.)
Amazing (Score:1, Interesting)
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Now you see what happens if you chop of a kings head - His coat of Arms gets grabbed by the NFL...
IMHO companies and organisations should be suable for beeing stupid and pissing everybody off in the process. Maybe we could ask the French to sue them about it. Or the Boy Scouts, or a few thousand city councils, a country or two and a lot of other people
Liberte, egalite, footballite! Cue Le Marseillaise (Score:2)
I say let them (Score:1)
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They have courts in Canada? I thought everyone was too polite to sue.
Legal issue is suspect, here (Score:2)
The NFL Saints can trademark a specific design - like gold, with black and white borders [nfl.com] but they can't trademark the fleur-de-lis itself. They also can't trademark this design if its already in common use.
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You're forgetting the main Legal Issue in American jurisprudence:
The law is what whoever can actually afford the lawyers says it is.
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The article summary is stupid. The particular fleur-de-lis that they're going after is very clearly intended to be a reference to The Saints. It's on a shirt that has a slogan referencing a song about The Saints.
The NFL's claim is a bit shaky here, but suggesting they're going to start going after any and all use of an old and widely-used symbol just because they've now gone after a specific NFL-oriented use of that symbol is just stupid.
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"The NFL Saints can trademark a specific design - like gold, with black and white borders but they can't trademark the fleur-de-lis itself."
Guess what, these fleur-de-lis are almost always following heraldic conventions. That means that only certain combinations are possible. For example: Yellow(gold) on blue or red on white but never yellow on white. Due to the limited amount of heraldic colours there are basically a number of permutations you can have with a fleur-de-lis, the symbol of the kingdom of Fran
Should be interesting ... (Score:2)
This should be interesting to see blow up in their faces.
The logo was chosen for the Saints because it had long been associated with New Orleans, not the other way around. I can really see a court giving them a pretty big smack down -- especially since they're also asserting control of "Who Dat" as a trademark when it belongs to someone else.
Just the sort of thing you'd expect.. (Score:1)
Just the sort of thing you'd expect from cowards who wear sissy pads for a sport played in shorts and a t-shirt by the rest of the world.
It makes me ashamed to say I live in the U.S. when Aussie football and Hockey are tougher sports.
Aussie Hockey? (Score:2)
Really?
Somehow I am certain that I am thinking of a different game.
http://www.hockey.org.au/ [hockey.org.au]
http://www.auf.com.au/HTML/Photo_Gallery.htm [auf.com.au]
Better article: they're claiming "who dat" too (Score:4, Interesting)
Since I submitted this, nola.com came out with a more in depth article. The NFL is claiming "who dat" too, which has also been around for years and years, AND the roman numerals XLIV, which have been around, since... well, the Romans. The article goes more in depth about the history of "who dat" which is pretty interesting.
http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf/2010/01/post_140.html [nola.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite. The Romans didn't use subtractions in their numerals. They'd use "IIII", not "IV". In other words "XLIV" would be "XXXXIIII" in Roman times