Hey.
My team is developing a website and we are having a sort of internal conflict. The two people making the website want to enter it in the website contest next year and I pointed out that the use of the FIRST logo in the graphic on the top of the page may not be legal under copyright rules because it has been manipulated. Could anyone check this out and confirm/deny my statement? The website is www.team857.com. Thanks.
I have noticed other teams with T-shirts and other items with a manipulated FIRST logo, like the circle would be transformed into an apple; but wether they had special permision or not, I do not know.
I was just thinking that because it will probably be entered in the competition, shouldn’t it follow the rules?
Any earlier thread brought about these results…
http://www.usfirst.org/4vol/resourcectr/graphics/index.html
You may also want to refer to this post. Emailing either one of the two people mentioned in the thread may be able to help you.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=221928&postcount=14
93 did that two years ago (see here) and, as far as I know we did not have to have special permission to do so.
I know, as far as reproducing the actual FIRST logo goes (on t-shirts, etc) a team had to have permission from FIRST, and their logo could only be shown in its true colors or black and white.
To avoid any future chaos, I’d ask FIRST just to be sure.
Our team won the website award this year. We had originally had a modified FIRST logo. We were informed that this was not allowed so we replaced it with a proper one. A logo or trademark should not be modified. Many teams do but if they do they are not conforming to proper standards and will not win any awards.
While FIRST says that you should not alter the logo, as long as you are not selling a product with the logo in question, and you are in fact a FIRST team, I dont think you will have a problem.
Check the 2004 competition documents, specifically section 2 - Communication, under paragraph 2.13 “USING THE FIRST LOGO” for guidelines.
Trademark law (and copyright and patent law for that matter) is a nebulous subject, for sure. However, this seems like a good place to clear things up a bit. For one, I recommend, if anyone is interested, to check out this [wikipedia.org] and this [publaw.com].
Now, to offer some thoughts. The primary reason of a trademark is to protect the consumer – so they can associate a particular mark with a particular company (for better or for worse). However, it also offers protection to the company – but this protection only exists so long as the company actively defends the trade mark. This explains why FIRST wants you to get it’s approval before using the trademark or any derivative.
And while FIRST has a protected right to this trademark, you also have a competing right of free speech. So, who wins? It all depends … there’s a thing known as “fair use” that says you can use any trademark you want under certain conditions (imagine trying to give a review of a Ford car, for instance, if you couldn’t use the word Ford because the company forbit it!) The basics of it is that there is no confusion – e.g., your use of Ford can’t imply that Ford endorses you or that you are somehow affiliated with them. If I want to sell a soda and I put the label Coke-a-cola on it, odds are this will confuse some people. Here’s a quote from one of the linked articles:
The fair use defense if it is to be successful must meet the following requirements: (1) the author’s use of the mark must accurately describe the trademark owner’s product or service; (2) the author must use the mark in a non-trademark manner and not as a source identifier of the author’s work; and (3) the author’s use must be in good faith.
All this considered, it seems that you’d be well advised to ask FIRST’s permission. It is a take on their logo, and if you’re using it for a FIRST-related club, there’s a fair chance that someone, especially young children which are your targeted audience, might confuse your use with affiliation, presumably failing “fair use.”
The apple referred to in the original post was (I assume) from our team, the NEW Apple Corps. Sorry Katie, we did get permission from FIRST to alter the logo. We made the changes with the apple replacing the circle and sent a copy of the graphic to FIRST. They gave us their stamp of approval and, viola, we have our Team 93 logo.
Good luck with your logo Wombat!
Sean
:ahh: :ahh: WOW! I bet you had fun with the game rules this year. :yikes: 
The guidelines basically specify that ANY modifications need to be approved by FIRST. 2.13 · Using The FIRST Logo
Thanks for the clarifications.
I convinced them to send the logo to FIRST to get it approved or disapproved.