Query about legality of sports games

Good Morning,

This is just a hypothetical question, I'm not considering making a football game
but if I were.....

If I was to make a football (Australian Rules Football not Soccer or Rugby or GridIron)
am I allowed to use the same colours/patterns of the jumpers (ie various simple patterns
such as stripes, sashes, single colours, hoops (horizontal stripes))
as the actual teams in the AFL use?

Also, given the names of the teams are simply names of suburbs in various Australian
cities can I call the teams in the game "Hawthorn" "Carlton" "Collingwood" etc.

And a third query - I share the name of a well known Essendon player, if I were to name
the game something like "Matty Lloyd's Football Game" would that be a problem?

How much money do you have? ;)

I am not a lawyer, but since you've posed your question to a forum almost totally devoid of lawyers, I'll have a crack:

1. You can use "various simple patterns" and various colour combinations, but your best bet to minimise the chances of anyone getting narky would be to avoid anything that very much resembles (or can be confused for) an actual team's kit colour/style.

2. I'm happy to be corrected, but I'll go so far as a "hell no". Imagine the defense of a football (soccer) game saying "But Manchester City is the name of a city - it's a coincidence they have a football team there".

3. It would depend on how much exposure you got, and whether the likelihood was that anyone could confuse that name with it being an endorsement by the football player. Like point #1, I would suggest avoiding "testing the boundaries" unless, like Sledge implies, you have plenty of money to make your point.

But since you're not considering making a football game, you have no worries. :o)

these are just oppinions and not legal facts

the "Matty Lloyd's Football Game" WOULD be an issue if the other matty is famous enough to be confused as endorsing your game

i share my name with a movie director and also a former football player
so if i ever made "Peter Jacksons this that tother" 90% of the world would think of lotr director than anyone else

so although you ARE matty lloyd if too many people especially THE OTHER one and his legal team thought you were on about him then ...

kinda why i go by P. Tony Jackson (when not ginger tea / gngr t3a) for my old book (not that lotr was in production at the time i started writing it i kinda liked my middle name more ;) )

other points
you could argue that a black and white striped kit could be any team from any country regardless of sport, but if you had the same colours for your fictitious melbourn team as the real team then thats going way too far in the look and feel department
having a totally different strip might be doable if from what i read there is no team name just town/city
so we in the uk couldnt have manchester city/united we could have manchester something else
but having real past present football player names from that team in your fictitious team would be another issue (but giving the player the option to make their own ryan giggs and david beckhams via a text file they could edit ...)

the only thing you have 100% look and feel endorsment is the game itself as its probably in the public domain (to an extent)

I wonder if you could mix and match for example:
"Bristol United", "Manchester Rovers" or "Manchester Town" or something :/

There should be nothing they can do about just using the placenames ie "Bristol" "Manchester" as long as the strips and logos are very different.

What LineOf7s said.

Mike Rowe Soft did not get "off the hook" because his name happened to be Mike Rowe. Apparently there are people stupid enough to confuse "Microsoft" with "MikeRoweSoft", and "Hari Puttar" with "Harry Potter" (I blame texting and IRC for that one). So an actual name match would probably be really bad.

i see no problems with that
but from what i read bout aussie rules their is now 2nd name just manchester, oldham, cambridge, london, liverpool etc

mind you one of my jobs oop norf the first question i was asked on my first day wasnt "whats your name?" but "city or united" i replied united, then added cambridge under my breath ;)

This is exactly the kind of "justice for sale" BS i was talking about in that other thread. Why shouldn't he be able to have his company called his name and what he does, and what possible hope has he got against those kind of Lawyer$.

Thanks for the responses,

I expected some of the answers but was a little surprised with regards to the jumpers, the designs are so simple (apart from maybe Fremantle).

I wonder what the response might be if I sent a polite email to the Australian Football League asking about such things.

EDIT - just sent one, let's see what I hear.

seeing as no one else plays aussie rules football its probably alien to the rest of us so why not make it 'alien'?
that way you dont have to worry about anyone elses toes being trod on ;)

Here are two simple tests:

1) What would your motivation be for using the same colors/ patterns/ approximate names as the AFL teams?

Probably to play the game in a "virtual world that simulates playing in the AFL"

2) Would the viewers of your game make the reasonable assumption that you were imitating the AFL's teams, even if it was unintentional?

Probably so.

In most countries, intellectual property rights ask the fundamental question: Would a "reasonable person" consider your work to be derived from the intellectual property?

Many IP laws reserve the right to create derivative works to the IP owner.

So if yours is judged a derivative work, then yes, you can expect to some day have your work challenged.

But, as a creator it's your responsibility to find out what is "safe turf" and what is "questionable" within the courts of your country, and decide where you want to play.

As for MikeRoweSoft, he said he thought it would be "funny" to add "Soft." Why? Of course, to sound like Microsoft. That fails test number 1.

You don't have to like it, but that was an easy one to predict.

My first piece of advice is don't ask for legal advice on an internet forum. You'll just get uninformed opinions, and that won't be usable as a defence in court.

My second piece of advice is do seek advice from a qualified legal professional. From them you'll get informed advice in which they'll most likely be able to quote precedent which will be usable as a defence in court.

Sports teams are protected by Intellectual property rights so unless you get permission you can't use any names at all, you probably can't copy the team strips either but you could call it Matty Lloyd's Football Game, maybe. :)

Luckily though, so you've got nothing to worry about. ;o)

>My first piece of advice is don't ask for legal advice on an internet forum. You'll just get uninformed opinions, and that won't be usable as a defence in court.

Not true. Some opinions are very well informed. Unfortunately, separating the informed from the uninformed is tricky unless you already know the answer to your own question.

Make the game configurable so people can change the colors, numbers, and names on the outfits.

Sure it is. Know much about the Clapham Omnibus?

Hello,

Got a response from the AFL -
allowed - to use my own name despite being same as a current player
not allowed (unless I license) - to use their brands/logos/jumper designs/team names

(i could be wrong but) i thinki thats one of the reasons cyber ball came about
atari wanted to make an nfl arcade game, but the licencing fees would have been too much and instead of making up their own league and so on they just thought sod it

iir someone tried making another american football league outside of the nfl and it tanked somewhat
it was seen as a poor mans alternative and not that much different than college football (and no i still dont know why they call it football and football soccer aside from the obvious jokes)

>Mike Rowe Soft did not get "off the hook" because his name happened to be
>Mike Rowe. Apparently there are people stupid enough to confuse "Microsoft"
>with "MikeRoweSoft"

and...

>This is exactly the kind of "justice for sale" BS i was talking about in
>that other thread. Why shouldn't he be able to have his company called his
>name and what he does, and what possible hope has he got against those kind
>of Lawyer$.

The Mikerowesoft situation isn't applicable here. Mike Rowe basically shot himself in the foot, by registering the domainname and then when Microsoft called, he demanded money for it.

Generally, Microsoft needed to prove that

a) they had a known trademark
b) the domain in question was identical or confusingly similar, and
c) that Mike Rowe acted in bad faith to profit from the mark.

A and B were already in the bag, when Microsoft called Rowe, and when he demanded money, C could be checkmarked as well.

The proper response when someone contacts you and asks you to transfer your domain because they operate under a similar name, is to say 'No!'. You don't start talking about money, because then they can take away the domain.

Even if you think that they are suggesting to buy it, then get it in writing and then refuse, saying that you are not interested in selling because you were hoping to make a website about rare flowers etc.

Once they realize that you won't discuss selling the domain instead of transfering it, if they really want it, they will then make you an offer.

The key thing is to get them to acknowledge that you did not buy it in bad faith, before you negotiate.

You could do a fantasy league where none of the strips are exactly the same as an existing team and the names are towns that don't have a football team, as long as you are not infringing on existing IPs then you're fine.

Oddball said:FlamDuck said:
Your comments merely serve to add validation to mine. I see nothing more than uninformed opinions in this thread, and that includes my opinions as well as yours.

Not really if his name IS "mike Rowe".
When i was writing pascal software years ago i went by the name "DanSoft". Does that mean if i had turned it into a succesful business i could get sued by others with the names FanSoft, Bansoft, SunSoft, etc.. Its logical, described what i was doing and my name after all soft is a common abriviation before MS came along. The only reason these are untouchable and successful at trial is because they have many greenbacks and it stinks.

Another example:
If i sold computers i might like the name "Dan Microsystems" or "Dan Computers" if not already taken, would Sun Microsystems or Dell Computers have a case?
If so then thats just stupid.

Out of all 67 billion names a guy can pick for his software company, he picks one that happens to be similar to the name already given to the biggest software company in the world.

"Dan Microsystems" would perhaps not be a problem but suppose my name was Simon Unterstofen von Nebelbacher then I could call it "S.U.N. Microsystems" and that would be a problem I guess.

>Out of all 67 billion names a guy can pick for his software company, he
>picks one that happens to be similar to the name already given to the
>biggest software company in the world.

Which isn't actually a problem, unless he registered the domain in bad faith to profit from the domains likeness to Microsoft.com.

am i the only one thinking mike rowe soft should have been making speccy software back in the day ;)