The Green Shift & EcoTrust in, "You shoulda taken out title insurance"

An editor once warned a reporter friend of mine that originality isn't exactly a commodity in Canada, especially in politics. "There's only been one original story in the past 100 years - man walks on moon. All the other stories have been done before."

Politicians are learning this with the environment. Every time they try to come up with a nifty name for their new and improved, green program, it's taken.

The Conservatives found this out in the spring of 2007 when they tried to dub a plan "EcoTrust." Turns out, that's the name of a long-standing non-profit in Canada and the government backed away from the title - not for any legal reason, but to prevent "confusion."

Now we're learning that the Liberals' "Green Shift" is taken too, and at least one Conservative blogger out there is predicting that they'll have to "cease and desist" in using the name.

(One line of argument I found intriguing: speculation that the company could be punished for being confused with Liberals. Who would be doing that punishing, I wonder? And does that mean that it's better for private firms to have ties to the Conservatives? Isn't that called patronage? But I digress.)

Actually, as some commenters to the blog have pointed out, names and titles don't fall under copyright protection. Anyone who's written a book knows this - you can call your book War and Peace or Little Women if you want. You just can't copy the words of Tolstoy or Louisa May Alcott and pass them off as your own. I relearned this lesson myself - from a 14-year-old - in the fall of 2003, when I had released a book on Paul Martin, called Juggernaut, and Lawrence Martin released his book on Jean Chrétien, called Iron Man. What neither of us knew is that we'd borrowed the names of comic superheroes for our books on the Liberal arch-rivals.

I'm pleased to report that neither of us faced any retribution, especially the kind a superhero could dole out.

UPDATE (June 24): The formidable Kady O'Malley, blogging for Macleans, has been tracking the possible role of Conservative agitators in whipping up confusion and angst over the Liberals' use of the "Green Shift" name. She asks the very worthwhile question - why would the Green Shift firm be getting a wave of phone calls, unless it was part of some campaign?

Comments

[Johnny LaRusic]

I am not a lawyer, but here goes anyways. :-)

While names and titles are not copyrightable, they can be trademarked. HUGE difference, but people get them confused all the time (along with patents versus copyright, but I digress).

Trademark laws exist to prevent confusion in the marketplace. While you can title your book about Paul Martin as "Juggernaut", publishing any sort of comic book under that title would probably result in Marvel sicking a team of lawyers after you.

For the "Green Shift" company to successfully stop the Liberal Party from using the slogan "Green Shift" for their plan, it would have to:

a) Have registered the trademark (which is *not* the same as registering a business name!), which the company has done: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/trademarks/search/viewTrademark.do;jsessionid=0000qJXQqh1r62bdXimOrbjUVZR:1247nfca5?language=eng&fileNumber=1244652&extension=0&startingDocumentIndexOnPage=1

b) Show that the public is likely to confuse the product(s) offered by the company with the plan, -or- show that the use of "Green Shift" by the Liberal Party "dilutes" the company's trademark. I really have no idea how those sorts of proceedings work, but that's the idea.

The Liberal Party, in addition to show that it's unlikely people would confuse the plan with the company, could also show that the company does not possess ownership of the term (by, I suppose, showing evidence that the term's generic, or that someone else used the term first).

Hope that helps,

Johnny!

[wascally wabbit]

Johnny has the legal aspects nailed...so I won't repeat!
More importantly, unless the company has a hidden agenda - say - to make problems for the Liberals because it is Tory-friendly, I would think that the explosion of interest in its name and its products or services - due to the Liberal campaign - would be a bonus that would be net beneficial to the company's business...you can't buy advertising at this price...ZERO!!!
So why would they protest so much....?

[Sandi]

Liberal name: theGreenShift.ca

The Company name: Greenshift

.....could the word "the" make the difference, together with the disclaimer?

just curious

[James Curran]

Apparently 2008 minus 2001 equals 10. I'm no mathematician, but exaggeration comes to mind. Similarly "we've lost clients over the past few days" seems to bear a striking similarity to "10 years".

[Matt]

(One line of argument I found intriguing: speculation that the company could be punished for being confused with Liberals. Who would be doing that punishing, I wonder? And does that mean that it's better for private firms to have ties to the Conservatives? Isn't that called patronage? But I digress.)

Come now, Susan, you're better than this. She is losing clients who feel they are joined at the hip to the Liberal Party. It's not a matter of *which* party she is perceived to be affiliated with - it's that the perception of affiliation with *any* political party. In capitalist societies, clients and customers do the punishing.

Your glaring hate on for the Conservatives, betrayed by your pondering if it's better to have ties with that party, really sullies your article. Tell me, which Party was it that was benefiting companies left, right, and centre during the Sponsorship Scandal? Which party has been in power 75% of the time over the last century? Surely being friends with Conservatives isn't that helpful.

Further, your analogy on the name of the political biographies is painfully inaccurate at best. A better analogy would be writing a book on a fictional super hero with similar costume, and calling it The Ironman, and releasing it under the name The Marvel Comics.

And finally, a defined campaign to flood Green Shift with phone calls? Clearly this must be the case, as every astute journalist knows that conservatives can't think for themselves. For the record, I was the one who found their number and decided to call to make sure I understood the situation right before I posted to make sure I wouldn't be embarrassed by having to retract inaccurate information afterwards. That's called responsible journalism. Give it a try someone, please.

[Platty]

Why is it so hard for people to understand that this company does not want to be associated with a political party? More to the point, the company does not want to be seen as a supporter of a party that still owes Canadians Millions of dollars and has done nothing in the past 15 years on the environment file.

[Timwest]

After Millions of dollars being passed out in brown envelopes to
Liberal AD company's (AD Scam) ............ really folks would you want your business you built up since 2001 to be linked to LPoC !

I would not want my business link to Libs, CPC or Dippers, you want
to be free from politics.

When are the Liberals going to pay back Canadian taxpayers the
60 to 80 million they still owe from AD Scam !

[wascally wabbit]

I find it so-o interesting - that these Tory hacks can make the extrapolations that judge / commissioner Gomery (who did not seem to be biased towards the Liberal party) could not support with facts - that somehow Liberal party officials knew about money in brown envelopes...but they conveniently forget about their own former leader / lawyer in a former life - has even admitted that he had no qualms at the time about taking money in brown envelopes..
Anyway - moving on from the propaganda battle - and the mud slinging at yourself Ms. Delacourt...
I think Kady O'Malley may well have a point...similar to the one I expressed above...methinks this Greenshift company doth protest too much....
I used to have a website registered for my company that had the same name - coincidentally - as a much larger company in the same business - on the other side of the Atlantic...mine had the .CA suffix - plus the .ORG suffix...never had any communication from them asking me to cease and desist...or even a tempting offer to buy out my domain names...
So - all in all - I think this is all a stormy nickel in a brown envelope - to deliberately mix my metaphores...