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29 September 2017Copyright

PGA will not ‘putt up’ with copyright infringement

The Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) has sued a California-based man running a YouTube account allegedly showing copyrighted golf tournament footage to help sell his book.

PGA, which manages the PGA Tour and PGA European Tour, filed the case at the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division on Wednesday, September 27.

Joseph Sullivan, who allegedly runs the ‘1 Step to Better Golf’ YouTube channel, was accused of posting “infringing materials” to his page and featuring “third party video advertisements promoting defendant’s golf instructional books”.

The channel, which has over 47,000 subscribers, features videos of golfers and includes links in the comments to a website selling the book. Some of the videos have over two million views.

In the complaint, PGA added that it has served at least 13 takedown notices to YouTube in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but the defendant allegedly objected to these.

“Defendants have infringed and continue to infringe plaintiff’s copyrighted PGA Tour content and continues to cause significant injuries, damages and losses in amounts to be determined at trial,” PGA concluded in saying.

As reported by WIPR in July, golf has been at the centre of an IP infringement case before.

Acushnet, the parent company of golf equipment and apparel brand  Titleist , sued an online store selling parody clothes for trademark infringement and dilution.

According to the claim, imadebogey.com was selling golf apparel, headwear and accessories under the marks ‘Titties’ and ‘Titlost’, and using stylised script which is “identical” to that used for the ‘Titleist’ mark.

The site is no longer in use.

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20 July 2017   The parent company of golf equipment and apparel brand Titleist has taken a swing at an online store selling parody clothes.