Vodafone speech mark denied US copyright protection
The US Copyright Office has refused to grant Vodafone copyright protection for its speech mark logo, after the telecommunications company asked the office twice to reconsider its decision.
The logo is a 2D red and white image with grey shading, featuring an apostrophe within a circle in the centre of a square.
Vodafone’s logo was created in 1998, though it has played a much greater role in Vodafone’s branding under a new marketing strategy announced last year.
In December 2016, Vodafone applied to register copyright protection for the logo.
The Copyright Office refused the request in July 2017 after finding that the work lacked the “authorship necessary to support a copyright claim”..
Copyright law only protects “those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity”, and the office determined that Vodafone’s work did not meet this threshold.
Vodafone asked the office to reconsider its refusal in October last year, but in March 2018, the review board “re-evaluated the claims and again concluded that the work did not contain a sufficient amount of original and creative graphic or artistic authorship to support a copyright registration”.
The office explained that the circle, square, and apostrophe that make up the design are “common and familiar shapes”.
Vodafone requested that the Copyright Office reconsider the refusal a second time, in June 2018.
The telecommunications company argued that the work contained the “requisite amount” of creativity, and the central symbol is not an apostrophe but a “ballooned droplet” with distinguishable curvature and orientation.
Vodafone claimed that, even if the symbol is understood as an apostrophe, such elements are protectable by copyright where the work also contains expressive elements.
Last week, on August 21, the Copyright Office Review Board upheld the finding that the logo is not eligible for copyright protection.
“An opening single quote is a familiar symbol and is not registrable,” the review board said.
It noted that squares and circles are both common geometric shapes, so they cannot be protected by copyright.
The Copyright Office added that the mark’s use of two main colours to distinguish three shapes is a “trivial use of colour”, and “minor shading and highlighting does not meaningfully add to the creative authorship of the work”.
“This decision constitutes final agency action in this matter,” the Copyright Office concluded.
Also last week, the review board refused to grant Europe’s football governing body UEFA copyright protection for its famous Starball logo.
The review board said UEFA’s logo, which is made up of a 2D ball shape full of black stars, is not sufficiently original to sustain a claim for copyright.
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