And you thought the US copyright mess was getting ridiculous. Next up: copyrighting the alphabet.
The “One Cent of the GST NOW!” campaign, launched in February of this year, has had significant success in educating the public about the needs of Canada’s municipalities and has won broad support from across Canada for all municipalities to have funding that grows with the economy.
The Royal Canadian Mint, a corporation of the federal government, has now demanded that the City of Toronto pay $47,680 for the public education campaign. Included in this amount is a request for $10,000 for the use of the words “one cent” in the campaign website address (www.onecentnow.ca) and the campaign email address (onecentnow@toronto.ca), and an additional $10,000 for the use of the words “one cent” in the campaign phone number (416-ONECENT). The remaining $27,680 has been assessed against the City for the use of the image of the Canadian penny in printed materials such as pins and posters. (The Mint has come to this amount by taking the total number of materials printed divided by the approximate population of Toronto, and then using a percentage of that number to arrive at a dollar figure.)
I guess we’re going to be sued for using that headline and the photo. Come and get us (except kindly Uncle Dave, of course), Mounties! You’ll never take John alive!
I should point out that radio news here reported that Mayor Miller basically said (ad-lib) “pfft, if you think we are going to pay that, you’re F’N CRAZY!”
That is indeed the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve always thought that stupid lawsuits like this only happened in the usa.
p.s.: Hey John I’d watch what you say about the RCMP, they only seem soft by their old school mounty parade uniforms for tradition purposes only, but they are FBI hardcore, but actually competent. oh no…I’ve got to disappear for a bit…
This is just the Conservative Federal government sending a signal to the other levels of government (Provincial and Municipal) to stop asking for a fair portion of Federal taxes.
This sort of thing drives taxpayers crazy since there’s only one taxpayer involved in this entire process, paying taxes to all three freaking levels of government.
No matter what happens here, the taxpayers pay the damned bill, not the politicians in the various levels of government.
Taxpayers don’t care what level of government is ripping them off for taxes or what level of government politician is handing out tax dollars to their rich friends and international corporations so they can get re-elected.
All of this idiocy means less than nothing.
The Canadian gov is thinking about getting ride of the 1cent coin (bout time we join NZ and the Aussies)
If this flies, I’m going to copyright the word, “Hello.” Every time someone answers the phone I’ll get a royalty or sue their ass off.
Don’t you love the way Canada is being Americanized, the next thing you know they will only show black criminals and ignore white crooks in their news programs.
Can I ask…
What is the patent on…
1cent or one cent or onecent or Woncent…
ALL different..
#6 Close
they will import Wood from Russia, imported over the Norht pole, change 25% Tax, then Ship it to the USA, WHICH charges an 25% import tax to USA citizens…But ships ALL its wood to CHINA…
Did Microsoft ever win their patent on the binary digits, 1 and 0? Cause if they did, then the Canadian mint owns them a pretty penny for prefixing “cent” with 1. Unless they specify that it’s 1 in decimal.
Makes no cents to me.
At least theirs doesn’t say ‘In God We Trust’.
anyone patent ‘God’ yet??
Am I remembering another one of these ridiculous things correctly, or didn’t D. Trump try to secure the rights to the phrase ‘you’re fired’ a while back, or something like that?
Oh crap….I just said…dammit….
“I won’t give them a red cent” is obviously in the public domain.
Way back around 1980 I bought a CP/M computer … and about a year later received a circular letter (pre-Internet!) from the company with the phrase “User Friendly” as being their trademark. I wonder how many kazillions of dollars that would be worth.