Logo Ownership?

[eagles2win]

Watching last nights NRL on Fox they had a little bit on Newtown towards the end in which they state the club owns the rights to its logo.

So it begs the question who owns Manly's and other clubs?
The NRL, the Penns or the actual club itself? If it's the NRL wouldnt it be in the club's best interests to get it back?

 

[HappilyManly]

Super League took out the rights pre signing anyone.

Its an indictment on the old ARL Board that they never understood branding and thus were at the mercy of NSW Ltd.

 

[ManlyBacker]

I couldn't be bothered doing a full search but from memory, and to the best of my knowledge, the NRL owns all the club logos with exception of Melbourne Storm and I think the other one is the GC Titans.

 

[eagles2win]

Also noticed today the Penrith Panthers - took the rights to West Sydney Panthers

 

[Dan]

ha I was just researching this. Some of the logo's are trademarked by the clubs. Some aren't. Manly owns the rights to a lot of its older logos the rest are licensed

 

[Dan]

Interestingly, special notes on the trademark for Manly-Warringah Sea eagles and the bird logo indicate that they have no real exclusive rights to Manly-Warringah meaning that Manly-Warringah Silvertails for instance would be a completely legal trademark

 

[simon_eagle]

ha I was just researching this. Some of the logo's are trademarked by the clubs. Some aren't. Manly owns the rights to a lot of its older logos the rest are licensed

But the Club owns the right to the club colours and club name, right? Or at the very least, Penn could not (on his own) decide to change our colours to pink and blue (without Board approval)?

At least that was the case when Delmage owned the Club and his 51% share didn't entitle him to those wholesale changes such as club colours etc.

 

[Larissa]

We do not own the rights to our logo, the NRL does.

They own the rights to most of the club's logo's. Off the top of my head only the Titans own their own (please do not hold me to this!)

Cheers,

Larissa

 

[Dan]

We do not own the rights to our logo, the NRL does.

They own the rights to most of the club's logo's. Off the top of my head only the Titans own their own (please do not hold me to this!)

Cheers,

Larissa

I think Titans are the only one that fully own their brand, so I am pretty sure you are correct. Storm own their license though, so may fall into the same category.

ha I was just researching this. Some of the logo's are trademarked by the clubs. Some aren't. Manly owns the rights to a lot of its older logos the rest are licensed

But the Club owns the right to the club colours and club name, right? Or at the very least, Penn could not (on his own) decide to change our colours to pink and blue (without Board approval)?

At least that was the case when Delmage owned the Club and his 51% share didn't entitle him to those wholesale changes such as club colours etc.

I think you would be very hard pressed to copyright a colour mate. It's more that, they are the colours that we are licensed under, not so much that its a trademarked colour.

However I would have a very hard time starting the "Hervey Bay Sea Eagles" with Maroon and white as my colours.

That wouldn't however stop me from starting "Eagle Dan's Brick Laying" or similar and having Maroon and white as the company colours.

So not sure its a matter of "owning the colours" as it is more the internal workings of the company who decides which colours the company uses. i.e. the football club has this right

 

[Shoe1]

It works. A few years back I had 25 players signed and I was this close to fielding my very own manly warringah sea eagles team in the nrl. At the last moment I was thwarted by gallop and his cronies because they own the sea eagles logo. I had no chance in court, so dropped the idea.

---

At first I was pissed off but then I made up my own half assed logo, a "titan" ffs! Now I'm running my own team, shhh no one seems to realise I have no actual real funds to do this, but somehow my team is still in the comp! What a scam ...

 

[Phantar]

Also noticed today the Penrith Panthers - took the rights to West Sydney Panthers

Manly did a similar thing during the Superleague War. They registered names like the 'East Coast Sea Eagles', Northern Sea Eagles' etc. - about four different names in all. Just in case Phonehacking Ltd tried to set up a rival team in the vicinity.

 

[simon_eagle]

We do not own the rights to our logo, the NRL does.

They own the rights to most of the club's logo's. Off the top of my head only the Titans own their own (please do not hold me to this!)

Cheers,

Larissa

I think Titans are the only one that fully own their brand, so I am pretty sure you are correct. Storm own their license though, so may fall into the same category.

ha I was just researching this. Some of the logo's are trademarked by the clubs. Some aren't. Manly owns the rights to a lot of its older logos the rest are licensed

But the Club owns the right to the club colours and club name, right? Or at the very least, Penn could not (on his own) decide to change our colours to pink and blue (without Board approval)?

At least that was the case when Delmage owned the Club and his 51% share didn't entitle him to those wholesale changes such as club colours etc.

That wouldn't however stop me from starting "Eagle Dan's Brick Laying" or similar and having Maroon and white as the company colours.

I'm surprised that local small businesses in the community don't do such things. "Dan's Plumbing" from the Shire who have a shark on their logo and wear blue overalls. Perhaps they do and I'm just not aware of it.

 

[clontaago]

I think you would be very hard pressed to copyright a colour mate. It's more that, they are the colours that we are licensed under, not so much that its a trademarked colour.

You can trademark a colour in some rare instances. Cadbury "Purple" is trademarked in Australia.

"Despite the difficulty of obtaining trade marks for single colours, companies are increasingly registering their distinctive colours in recognition of the importance of colour to their brands. In Australia more than three hundred trade marks have been registered, including recently, the Whiskas’ purple"

 

[Dan]

We do not own the rights to our logo, the NRL does.

They own the rights to most of the club's logo's. Off the top of my head only the Titans own their own (please do not hold me to this!)

Cheers,

Larissa

I think Titans are the only one that fully own their brand, so I am pretty sure you are correct. Storm own their license though, so may fall into the same category.

ha I was just researching this. Some of the logo's are trademarked by the clubs. Some aren't. Manly owns the rights to a lot of its older logos the rest are licensed

But the Club owns the right to the club colours and club name, right? Or at the very least, Penn could not (on his own) decide to change our colours to pink and blue (without Board approval)?

At least that was the case when Delmage owned the Club and his 51% share didn't entitle him to those wholesale changes such as club colours etc.

That wouldn't however stop me from starting "Eagle Dan's Brick Laying" or similar and having Maroon and white as the company colours.

I'm surprised that local small businesses in the community don't do such things. "Dan's Plumbing" from the Shire who have a shark on their logo and wear blue overalls. Perhaps they do and I'm just not aware of it.

I knew someone who had something like
"Eagle Legends Builders" and they had an Eagle on the card that was Maroon and the card was white

I think you would be very hard pressed to copyright a colour mate. It's more that, they are the colours that we are licensed under, not so much that its a trademarked colour.

You can trademark a colour in some rare instances. Cadbury "Purple" is trademarked in Australia.

"Despite the difficulty of obtaining trade marks for single colours, companies are increasingly registering their distinctive colours in recognition of the importance of colour to their brands. In Australia more than three hundred trade marks have been registered, including recently, the Whiskas’ purple"

Very rare circumstances but yes you can

 

[Phantar]

Manly-Warringah Cabs and the old Manly-Warringah Concrete (who had maroon & white cement mixers - I don't think they're still trading) are two that come to mind that have used the Sea Eagle and/or the colours. It's not unheard of.

 

[Nuttybott]

It isn't just the logo. I used to wonder just how much of the clubs' identities had to be signed over to the NRL's ownership in order to qualify for a licence to take part in that competition when it started in 1998. Remember when Manly were refused permission to revert to their traditional (and much loved) "twin hoops" jumper in 2005? The reason given was that this design was being used to market the "Retro" line of jerseys at the time, and so Manly had to come up with something that was as close as possible to that design without breaking the NRL's rules. What we ended up with was the predominantly maroon jersey that we wore up until the end of the 2008 season. It is worth noting, however, that the same restrictions were not applied to other clubs, such as Souths or St George...another example of the NRL's (read News Ltd's) spiteful vendetta against the Manly club ever since the end of the Super League war.

But I remember thinking at the time: "how can the NRL claim ownership rights to a jersey design that was being worn by Manly as long ago as 1968...30 years before the NRL even existed? Surely the design belongs to the club and/or the NSWRL."

If the clubs' traditional jersey designs belong to the NRL, when did this happen...and how?

 

[Dan]

That's not really how it happened and it's all actually documented in here somewhere.

But it was because we had already agreed to an away and home jersey for x years and this conflicted with that

 

[eagles2win]

I think the clubs should be pushing for it.

So they can have more say in how there logo is used.

 

[Nuttybott]

That's not really how it happened and it's all actually documented in here somewhere.

But it was because we had already agreed to an away and home jersey for x years and this conflicted with that

Well I heard it directly from Peter Peters at the time that the club wanted to revert to its traditional "hoops" jersey, but was prevented from doing so by the NRL, and that the club could do nothing about it because the NRL now owned all clubs' jersey designs.

And I can't help but wonder why, seeing as this design was (and remains) the most popular and recognisable Manly jersey EVER, the club has not been given the opportunity to revert to it in the years since, during which time we have had two design changes, neither of which met with a particularly warm reception from the fans...