LAW/CULTURE/CANADA: CN Tower Owners vs Pop Culture

[dewline]

Canada Lands Company's legal reps just put their litigational foot in something rotten and smelly here. This is a place where pop culture and the law cross paths and swords, somewhat.

Does this mean that no one can watch Forever Knight, Rookie Blue, Flashpoint (the Toronto cop show), Coroner and the like anymore? Probably not, but the fallout's probably going to create problems anyway.

https://boingboing.net/2019/10/03/clcl-trademark-trolls.html

Comments

[sabotabby]

It would be gosh-darned terrible if everyone shared lots of pictures of the CN Tower on social media, and in particular that book cover, to weaken the company's case. A side effect might be that the author gets some free promotion and the trademark trolls get Streisanded.

[dewline]

It certainly would.

By the by, it seems Mr. Bow - the author affected here - is, like myself, a past contributor to Spacing Media's various reports, opinion pieces, etc. on urban infrastructure across Canada.

[sabotabby]

Oh cool!

I haven't read anything by him but I would like his book to sell well on principle.

[thewayne]

O. M. G.

Does Canada have a parody exemption in trademark/copyright law? If they do, regardless of the outcome of this suit, CLCL is about to get slammed bigly.

[dewline]

We do have such a thing, if memory serves. It was recently renovated too, I think...in 2012. I'm not entirely clear on the details, though.

Sidebar of note for anyone who hasn't read the Boing Boing report yet: CLCL is a Crown corporation, like the CBC is and like Petro-Canada and Air Canada used to be.

[thewayne]

Yeah, I read the Boing Boing.  You'd think The Crown would slap them down and say "Cut out this shit, get real."

[notasupervillain]

I'll be curious to see how that shakes out. I really doubt it's gonna succeed.