Your theory that their “copyrights” only extend to within spitting distance of the Pope’s gold-plated clubhouse is, unfortunately, wishful thinking.

Berne signatories don’t get to make up laws that the other members then have to follow.

(for those who haven’t been to one, most/all Buca di Beppo restaurants have a big dining room for a large group, with a life-size head of Pope John Paul II in a plexiglass box atop the table. ergo, the Pope Room.)

–!-

I’m pretty sure the pope trademark is pretty well established for tomatoes and breadcrumbs.

No worries from me… I’ve been calling him “Joey the Rat” for years now…

If his picture is used on a website, or made out of bacon and green peppers on a Pope Pizza, ends up getting complaints under this copyright/trademark/whatever it should be, then that is just silly. Similarly with pope outfits, MacPope Fish on Friday burgers, or Papa Ben Beer. None of these misrepresent their agenda as being Catholic or Papal in nature. Perhaps they could be challenged, but to do so would be pointless and an embarrassment.

What it sounds like, from the bits quoted in the statement, and other things said in the article is that the Vatican is essentially claiming trademark rights and rights of publicity, not copyright. These are fairly well established rights in various legal regimes, for guarding against improper commercial use. They’re what legally prevent folks from selling BoingBoing brand taser guns, or putting Cory Doctorow’s likeness on a poster advertising some company’s latest DRM scheme, unless the principals agree to it.

To exercise some of these rights, you may need to explicitly assert them in some way. For instance, explicitly asserting a trademark seems to be recommended
to get full trademark protection. And use of the Seal of the United States is also restricted by a specific statute, again to prevent people from using it to imply their particular promotional scheme is endorsed by the US government.

If this is what the Vatican is doing here– trying to prevent improper commercial use or misleading implications of papal endorsement– it seems to me that they *should* make a public statement about the specific items that they’re claiming protection on, so that they can establish that protection both in the Vatican City-State and in other countries that have reciprocal agreements on things like trademark protection. And they seem to have limited the scope of items reasonably; it looks like they’re only claiming rights on things related to the Pope, and not to more general religious symbols or names.

I haven’t seen the statement on the Vatican’s web site at present, but if someone has seen the full statement, I’d love to see a link.

It’s more like registering your TM entitles you to some statutory damages (which means it’s easier to fight claims, since you can find contingency counsel who know there’s a big statutory payoff if they win), and it makes establishing priority simpler and less expensive.

But I agree, it really seems to me like everything the Pope is asking for he already gets under rights that are neighboring rights to copyright, like trademark, and that this is a weird, folk-copyright idea like that expressed by @TEKNA2007.

What the pope is trying to do is ridiculous.

The “already gets” is not a given. Trademark, unlike copyright, is a “use it or lose it” right in most jurisdictions. If you don’t register it, use it in commerce yourself, or otherwise claim it, then often someone else can use it. (The Berkman Center’s overview of trademark law, for instance, mentions how the rights to “Brooklyn Dodgers” went into the public domain after the LA Dodgers stopped asserting rights over it for a while.)

So it seems to me reasonable to me that if the Vatican wants to be secure in having trademark and related rights to the pope and related symbols, without itself getting into the pope-on-a-rope business, it should occasionally make an explicit statement of those rights. That’s what happens for many other trademarks.

I agree that the idea of a *copyright* or quasi-copyright to the pope’s name doesn’t make much sense. But I didn’t see a copyright claim in the quotations from the Vatican included in the news article. The term is only mentioned in one place in the article, with quotes around the word and only that word. While this could be a 1-word quote, it could also be the article writer’s own terminology, with the quotations used to denote an approximate explanation rather than an attributed claim. (Or, in other words, “copyright” would be the writer’s idea, not the Vatican’s, in this case.)

If we could see a full copy of the original Vatican statement, though, this matter could be cleared up.