Posted this on the Tottenham Hotspur forum. If you didn't see (it was on South Today earlier) Tottenham Hotspur have threatened a Wessex League side Fleet Spurs with legal action because of apparently the Fleet Spurs logo is too similar to the Tottenham Hotspur logo and that posseses such a risk to Tottenham's identity, people all over the world will clearly get confused! It's so nice of Tottenham to bully a Wessex League side using their financial clout as a result of being in the Premiership. I'm sure a small provincial football club using a similar logo to Tottenham really posses a massive risk of undermining their identity, I mean Fleet Spurs and Tottenham Hotspur, they're easily confused! Frankly, this bullying (as there's no other word for it) sums up everything that's wrong with football in this country. Perhaps if you're so desperate for Fleet Spurs to change their logo, Tottenham should pay the costs required to get it changed? But hey, who gives a toss about the non-league eh? As long as the Premiership big boys can have their toys.
Well look at this way.........what if Fleet Spurs were to get promoted to the Premier League in say 50/60 years time ? Can't you see the problems that could cause for poor old Tottenham For God's sake Lapras, it could ruin them.......
I was a bit surprised that the THFC lawyers said... "If we do not take action to stop Fleet Spurs using our cockerel logo, it can undermine our ability to stop other unauthorised people who use our logo for commercial purposes, such as counterfeiters." Is that true? Not a legal expert but it sounds a bit like bovine ****.
It is true actually. A company's name and identity (logo) gets a lot of protection under the law. The case that amused me was Stringfellows night club which sued the makers of Stringfellows chips for using their name - they lost because the products were so different that nobody would confuse the chips with a nightclub - in this case, people could confuse the logo.
In theory yes, but being realistic, you wouldn't see the logo outside of Fleet. And even in Fleet, you'd be unlikely to see it. Plus, it has a lot more blue and red than the Tottenham logo has.
It's no longer local, it's no longer sport, this is 'business'. Like it or not, this is the silly world we live in now - the brand is everything.
Didn't David Beckham's ugly trout of a missus try and sue Peterborough Utd, regarding their use of "Posh" as a nickname, some years ago What a joke !
They should change their name to Fleet Gunners and change their badge also,,,, please log in to view this image
Not actually true, sadly: http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/17/ctv.metallica/ And yeah, Tottenham is in the right here. It's a direct appropriation; had Fleet Spurs asked, there's a decent possibility that they'd have been allowed to 'license' its use for a nominal free, but THFC would be inviting a world of problems if they allowed unauthorized use.
As I said on the Spurs board, legally it's a right. Morally? Not a chance. Also, why is this an issue now all of a sudden when Fleet Spurs have been using the logo since 1948?
They haven't been using the logo since 1948, it was recently changed to that. They've been using a cockerel previously, but not one that was an exact copy of Tottenham's.
