What’s in a Name?

From national politics let’s turn our sights to the local variety: Bob LeDrew over at Flacklife has picked up the newsdurhamregion.com story of Oshawa City Councillor Robert Lutczyk who claims to hold the copyright on the name “University of Ontario Institute of Technology” among other names. Thing is, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology already existed before he supposedly copyrighted the name in 2005.

From the news article, Lutczyk apparently sent a letter to local newspaper Oshawa This Week (who also publish the newsdurhamregion.com site) that said:

“I am now putting you on notice that I forbid you to print the phrase “University of Ontario Institute of Technology” in Oshawa This Week under threat of further legal action, including personal liability,” the letter concludes.

The article goes on to explain:

Sharon Groom, a lawyer with Toronto-based firm McMillan Binch Mendelsohn, which specializes in intellectual property law, said literary copyrights pertain to written materials like books and protect the content, not the titles.

“A lot of people get it wrong,” she said. “They think you can protect a name through copyright law, but you can’t. In this case, there has to be an actual literary work. There is no literary merit to just a title.” Ms. Groom, who is co-chair of the firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology Law Group, said a trademark would have been the proper way to protect the university’s name and said even if the councillor had managed to obtain one — it’s a more complex process than securing a copyright — it wouldn’t supersede the ones the university registered in 2003.

LeDrew points out: “I look forward to him chasing down the 71,000 web hits using “his” phrase and shutting them down, one by one. I’m sure the taxpayers of Durham Region will be behind him all the way.”

If you are tracing the blog comments, some of them also reside over on Michael Geist’s blog.