Wednesday, February 21, 2007

This Ain't Over

John Supinie, who copied his blog name from our's, has a column up about how hard Ron Guenther is working given all the balls he has in the air right now i.e. allegations of football recruiting violations (wish he would come forward and finger the culprit of that NY Times story), the Jamar situation and the Chief situation.

For this morning, I want to focus on this section of his story:

On Friday, Guenther and the Illini watched as the school announced Chief Illiniwek — an 81-year-old tradition — would be retired following Wednesday’s game against Michigan. The school still can use Fighting Illini and Illini as nicknames, but there’s still the lingering issue of the Chief Illiniwek logo that’s sold on official school merchandise.

Eventually, the logo will also likely be retired, but first the school must handle the legal issue of the copyright. If the copyright isn’t used for a long period of time, the school could lose it and the Chief logo could fall into someone else’s possession.

That silly copyright. I tell ya. Gettin' in the way of everything.

If anyone out there is an expert in copyright law, we want to hear from you. Is there a way the university could "close" the copyright so it can never be used again? Is there any way an alum (a wealthy one if necessary) could buy the copyright and preserve the Chief logo?

In the end I don't think opponents of the Chief are going to be satisfied that the Chief is gone. I hope I'm wrong but I believe they will look to channel their energies in going after the logo, then the name "Fighting Illini."

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# posted by Chief : 7:56 AM


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