Woodland Trust passing off?
Editor at Naturenet
Uncooperative crusty. Unofficial Isle of Wight cultural ambassador. Conservation, countryside and the environment, with extra stuff about spiders.
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An unusual advert caught The Ranger’s eye in his own sidebar:
Look carefully. Yes, that’s right, the advert headed ‘Wildlife trust’ is actually pointing to a Woodland Trust website. When you click on it (I tried) it takes you to a page exhorting you to join the Woodland Trust. Some mistake, possibly? There’s keen competition between wildlife charities for members. The Wildlife Trusts are the big boys of wildlife charities – a powerful national federation of local trusts, with a lot of members. The Woodland Trust, by comparison, is a quarter the size, but pretty good at getting publicity. I reckon the Wildlife Trusts wouldn’t be too happy about this headline.
Yep fine…passing off….yep…zzzzz
That kind of pin-head dancing would get you nowhere in court, I’d say. I’m not suggesting any copyright or trademark infringement (two different things, incidentally) but passing off. Hey, perhaps I shoulda been a lawyer? Is it too late?
Ah – but they’ve not capitalised the T of trust. They could be advocating trust in wildlife (as opposed to…?) rather than The Wildlife Trusts. There’s no copyright on English words. As Steven Spielberg found out when he tried to TM the word ‘Jurassic’.
Sorry, I don’t get it. Is it that one charity can be confused with another, or is it more sinister than that? Is the Woodland Trust some dark volkisch Gruppe we should avoid?
The Ranger responds: Apols. Got carried away and used rangery jargon. I’ll edit the post to explain: your first hypothesis is correct, although the second one sounds far more exciting!