Re: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Photo

> The Rock and Roll opinion is wrong on trademark principles
> too. I hope it's appealed, so things get straightened out.
> Paul J. Heald

While I agree that the court in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc. v. Gentile Productions, 934 F. Supp. 868 (N.D. Ohio 1996), skirts the boundaries of good trademark law, I'm not so sure that it portends drastic changes to our rights to, say, take photographs of skylines. At least two facts narrow the impact of the opinion:

1. The plaintiff museum also sold posters portraying the subject building (though the court errs, I think, in jumping from "lost licensing revenues" to "evidence of infringement"); and
2. The defendant failed to provide an adequate disclaimer of the independent origin of its product, id. at 872 (thus rendering appeal to collateral use cases such as Prestonettes and Champion Spark Plugs rather futile).

Again, I do not mean to apologize for the court; I mean merely to assuage some worries about the case's impact.

Tom W. Bell
Assistant Professor
Law and Technology Program
UD Law School
bell[_at_]odo.law.udayton.edu

PGP fingerprint:
78 06 76 AC 32 38 A6 4C B3 81 F4 1E 2E 27 AC 71 Received on Thu Oct 31 1996 - 14:27:32 GMT