Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
I read this differently. J&J was fine with the Red Cross using their registered trademark for aid and relief, but now the Red Cross wants to use it to compete on a business level with J&J.
"After more than a century of strong cooperation in the use of the Red Cross trademark. ... we were very disappointed to find that the American Red Cross started a campaign to license the trademark to several businesses for commercial purposes," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement.
Edit- also it appears that J&J tried to settle this dispute without a lawsuit, but the Red Cross declined.
The company (J&J) also said that it had offered to engage in third-party mediation to resolve the dispute, but that the Red Cross declined.
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I'm glad you brought this up because this is a better representation of the situation. I know they have been getting into medical training manauls for quite some time now, often published by third parties, and putting their name and endorsement on them.
I know from personal experience that the Red Cross is vicious in their defense of the Red Cross symbol and the prosecution of people who infringe on it. I publish a medical magazine, and I've seen some pretty heavy-handed stuff by the Red Cross over the years. In one case a guy was working as a medical clown, on a volunteer basis, going into hospitals and such to work with kids. He happened to have an orange cross on his clown suit. After I ran a feature story on him, the Red Cross came down on him big time and made him remove the orange cross from his clown suit. It wasn't a polite request either ... it was in the form of a harsh letter threatening litigation.
The Red Cross's rationale for closely guarding the use of the red cross symbol is to prevent if from becoming so commonly used that it detracts from the Red Cross's ability to be visible and readily identifiable at disaster scenes. This is very valid rationale too. But when they start getting into dilution of the brand identity by lending it to third parties themselves they're being rather hypocritical, especially when they've been rather heavy handed in their dealings with infringers themselves.
I guess the ultimate question is who registered the symbol first. If J&J feels they have basis for a lawsuit they must have something they feel gives them first claim to the symbol.