NRA behaving like HCI and CPHV against progun site?
- Thread starter John/az2
- Start date
Mike Irwin
Staff
There are two sides to the issue, Orlando.
As has been noted, NRA registered the mark "The Armed Citizen" over 20 years ago. They own that mark.
In the interim, though, a completely new form of media -- the internet -- has literally sprung up, literally overnight compared to other forms of media.
The question is do the current patent and trademark laws apply, or should they apply, to the Internet? Should someone who already owns a mark have automatic rights to it in a new media environment (as mark owners did at the dawn of the television age), or should those marks, many of them valuable properties in their own right, be up for grabs?
That's been an ongoing fight, with both sides winning victories in the courts.
Until a definitive ruling is made by the Supreme Court, or until US and international legislation catches up, owners of traditional media marks really have no choice but to try to defend their marks in the new media environment using the rules of the old.
As has been noted, NRA registered the mark "The Armed Citizen" over 20 years ago. They own that mark.
In the interim, though, a completely new form of media -- the internet -- has literally sprung up, literally overnight compared to other forms of media.
The question is do the current patent and trademark laws apply, or should they apply, to the Internet? Should someone who already owns a mark have automatic rights to it in a new media environment (as mark owners did at the dawn of the television age), or should those marks, many of them valuable properties in their own right, be up for grabs?
That's been an ongoing fight, with both sides winning victories in the courts.
Until a definitive ruling is made by the Supreme Court, or until US and international legislation catches up, owners of traditional media marks really have no choice but to try to defend their marks in the new media environment using the rules of the old.