Youtube monetization & trademark laws?

[Duck]

Okay so a couple of things before I start!

1) I'm not sure if this should be here or in the academy - feel free to move this mods, as appropriate

2) I'm not expecting there to be a solicitor out there to answer this in a legal advice way! (although if there is, that would certainly help!)

So, I have this idea for a brickflick series. Basically I'd like to base it on the coming Premier League season (similar to brick-by-brick but with a slight twist). I generally tend to monetize my videos if they dont breach copyright - I dont upload them with any intention of making money (Lets face it, no one would ever make a living from youtube advertising) but as their there, why not earn a tiny bit from them?

Now, I'm just a bit concerned about where the line is where I could go from it all being fine and dandy to me getting sued from here until tomorrow... I'd like to use custom decals - but if they include a club logo or sponsorship, I'm assuming this is in breach of trademark laws? Is this any different to someone monetizing a video of an official lego batman with the logo on it (there are plenty of those around!)? If I choose not to monetize, would I then get away with decals?

If it's all a big no-no (which is what I suspect), I'll just go for blank kits and I'm assuming I should get away with that?

As I say, I'm just a bit unsure what's legal and what's not - I might be being overly paranoid however.

Any help is appreciated!

Duck

Edited July 29, 2013 by Duck

[JopieK]

well, our approach is most of the time: we make free promotion for those companies. It would be a really lot of work to ask permission to all companies we use stickers of to ask permission. We know that Dutch beer marks are sensitive to this, but that is due to the fact that LEGO is often associated with minors and beer + minors is not a good idea. So... I think you should be fine. And otherwise you will see since you get a takedown notice (or a friendly email asking you to not use their logo anymore).

Of course the logo is their copyright so if you want to be absolutely sure, just ask I would say!

[mysteriouspi]

As a brickfilmer with a bit of experience concerning copyright, here's what I advise:

Your best shot may be to create parody logos. Viewers would still be able to tell what they are, but they would have a much lower chance of infringing copyright in that case. Use of the logo would be infringement, no doubt; the only question is whether or not the owners would flag your video for infringement. So you should probably play this one safe to avoid any potential conflicts.

As for monetization of Batman videos, not only are most of them parodies of some sort, but they probably don't use the real logo. Considering there are so many variations of the official logo out there, parodies could easily use something close that doesn't quite infringe copyright. The use of official characters is another story, of course, but I won't get into that.

One last thing: a surprisingly large (and growing) number of people actually do make a living off of YouTube advertising (as well as merchandise sales and other stuff related to their channel), not only because their videos get so many views, but because they put out so many videos in the first place. Of course, I don't think any brickfilmers have been able to do this. Not yet, anyway.

Hope this helps!

[Duck]

Thanks for the replies! I'll probably go down the very similar kit but no real logos route to be on the safe side.

I'll let you know how I get on!