Sock company steals Red Wings Logo

[xXHOCKEYTOWNXx 1]

how the hell did you come across this SOCK company?

I was watching the caps game.. the one before the Pens-Wings game on VERSUS. And they had that commercial.. I saw their logo and I'm like.. WTF?

And yeah the jingle is god awful. Sorry I didn't warn you guys about that previously.

[Gizmo 21]

There's a rule (or guideline, not sure how specific it is) that goes along with the "customer confusion" that Johnny Law brought up. A logo should be 30% different than something it's copied from... the wings without the wheel is about 30% different and, stuck to a sock, isn't confusing. Look at Western Michigan's Bronco logo compared to Denver's... it's flipped over and the colors are different. Nobody's going to confuse the WMU Broncos and the Denver Broncos.

There's a couple of issues that are in-play here: trademark and copyright.

Trademarks are used to publicly identify a business or other entity. As noted, a trademark violations occur when a trademark is misappropriated as a whole or enough of it (and can include "trade-dress") that a judge can rule that significant customer confusion is likely to take place between the mark's owner and another entity. In this regard, I think the sock company is safe from prosecution. I don't think it's likely that people will confuse the Silver Tech Sock Co. with the Red Wings. Having a similar trademark isn't a violation. The usage of the trademark is also a consideration. A trademark isn't a applicable to everything and must be attached to a certain product or service. The makers of Domino Sugar tried to sue Domino's Pizza for trademark violation when the pizza chain was spreading across the nation. It was dismissed because even though the root of the trademark name are identical ("Domino") and are both food products, the judge ruled that the sugar marker's trademark didn't extend to pizza and there was little chance that people would think that the sugar maker was now involved in the pizza business.

Copyright is another issue. I'm also sure that the "winged wheel" design is also copyrighted. In addition to protecting artistic works as a whole, copyrights also protect so-called "derivative works". Such works are defined as using a portion (or all) of one copyrighted work in another. The Silver Tech Sock logo is pretty clearly a derivative work incorporating the copyrighted Red Wings logo. If the Wings or the NHL (whoever owns the rights to the design) want to force the issue, I think they'd win a copyright challenge.

Edited November 14, 2008 by Gizmo

[OsGOD 3]

I think the biggest deal here is that they are not competitors so really there is no need for anyone to push the issue... now if the NHL decided to start making socks and selling them then they might have a reason to bring up a suit in court. As it stands, one is a Hockey team one is a sock company... neither is going to take away from the others business.

My gf was telling me about something happening in East Lansing with Papa Johns where an older company already had the name... they were sued and allowed in court to keep operating under the same name as the retail chain Papa Johns.

If what Casey said is right, they had their wings before the Red Wings did.

Edited November 14, 2008 by OsGOD