Fuck You, Bill O'Reilly!

[Spang]

Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS advertising during the Bill O'Reilly
show on FOX News. We do consider such comments as we review ad placement decisions which
involve a variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to
continue advertising during this show.

© 2009 United Parcel Service of America, Inc. UPS, the UPS brandmark, and the color brown are
trademarks of United Parcel Service of America, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Kaldaur]

Woot!

[Aslanna]

...the color brown are trademarks of United Parcel Service of America

wtf?

[cadalano]

UPS could sue my poop

[Gnomies]

lol

[Aslanna]

No.. Seriously.. How can you trademark a color!?

Pullman Brown is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms. UPS has filed two trademarks on the color brown to prevent other shipping companies (and possibly other companies in general) from using the color if it creates "market confusion." In its advertising, UPS refers to itself as "Brown" ("What can Brown do for you?").

I see. Still sounds like shenanigans to me.

[Gzette]

my alma mater trademarked burnt orange

http://www.utexas.edu/visualguidelines/vg_colors.html

[Aslanna]

It just says that those are the offical colors.. It doesn't say anything about being trademarked!

[Boogahz]

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/12/01/trademark

The Newest Trademark? College Colors
December 1, 2008
University colors are firmly ensconced in the cultures of many institutions, particularly those whose sports teams have long and successful histories as unifying forces for students and alumni. Think Carolina Blue for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas at Austin's burnt orange, the the University of Michigan's maize and blue. But it's a big leap from cultural icon to legal trademark, isn't it?

Not as big as it once was, thanks to a federal appeals court decision issued last week. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit -- ruling in a case involving an apparel manufacturer that made T-shirts that incorporated the colors but not the names or logos of major college football programs -- declared that the use of "color schemes along with other indicia" that have come to be strongly associated with a university can be enough to trigger a finding of trademark violation when they create a "a probability of confusion" in the mind of consumers.

The ruling, which treads some new ground in trademark law, also gives colleges more legal authority to defend their trademark licenses, said R. Charles Henn Jr., a lawyer who represented Louisiana State and Ohio State Universities and the Universities of Oklahoma and Southern California, which brought the lawsuit. "This is a very strong opinion for universities in the sense that it will allow them to go to their licensees and say, 'This is why you pay your license fee,' " Henn said. "It will allow universities in the enforcement of trademark to have an opinion that they can use offensively as they go after violations."

The four universities sued the company, Smack Apparel, in 2004 after they objected to a total of six styles of T-shirts related to the appearance of Oklahoma and LSU in the 2004 Sugar Bowl and to a series of national championships previously won by Ohio State and USC.

One of the shirts, for example, contained the final score of that Sugar Bowl, which LSU won, and the phrase "Sugar is Sweet." Although it did not use the phrase "LSU" anywhere, it was done up in the university's purple and gold colors. Another of the shirts, in Ohio State's scarlet and gray colors, had the phrase "Got Seven?" on the front and, on the back, the phrase "“We do! 7 Time National Champs,” along with a map of Ohio and a marker noting the location of Columbus, home to the university.

A federal court in 2006 endorsed the universities' arguments that Smack’s products were purposefully similar enough to their own licensed products that they were likely to mislead consumers into believing that the company's goods were produced by or associated with the universities' own. (This is not an incidental matter to the universities, the court noted, since the universities -- like many that play big-time sports -- earn tens of millions of dollars a year from the licensing of apparel and other goods related to their teams.) A jury awarded the universities damages of about $10,500 and lost profits of nearly $36,000, and the court barred Smack from manufacturing or selling the six T-shirt designs in question.

... {story continues}

[Gzette]

anyway, the only reason to wear Burnt Orange is to show you're a UT fan. It's a pretty ugly color, so I'm inclined to agree with any trademark claim.