Earlier today I happended across this article from which I learned that the Union County seal, pictured in the attachment, commemorates a murder. Apparently not only is there some feeling that the seal should be changed, but as a side issue the county government is seeking to prohibit use of the seal by a private citizen critical of the county government. There is also an issue of whether the seal can be trademarked.

I can’t quite make out the murder in the seal. It looks like a man running around in front of a house. I would think the man in the red coat is a British soldier, is he the one murdering a man or is he being murdered?

A trademark alone would protect the specific depiction from being used by other counties and could even be applied to other territorial governing divisions, but that would not protect it from industries unrelated to government and governing from adopting the emblem. Trademark generally protects names and symbols within a given and shared industry only. For example, I could not create a soda company called Pepsi, but could create a car company by that name.

Works of the federal government are generally open to use by the public, so long as they are not used in a manner to misrepresent a government entity, and I would assume many states have similar laws which would then apply to any county works. So a copyright might be out of the question, but a copyright-trademark coprotection would offer the greatest amount of control over the use of the seal.

I would think the easiest thing for the county board to do is pass an ordinance, which would only be enforceable inside the county limits itself, against misuse of the emblem. It would be quite easy to just hop across the county line and do what one will with the emblem, and be outside the jurisdiction of the ordinance and immunity from prosecution then.

xanderliptak;85879 wrote:

I can’t quite make out the murder in the seal. It looks like a man running around in front of a house. I would think the man in the red coat is a British soldier, is he the one murdering a man or is he being murdered?

The story is that the British soldier is murdering a woman.

Oh,well ...sometimes some common sense is required to see the whole thing in the larger historical context and this should not be taken so literally to the point of accusing the county government of promoting violence or crime!