I understand the legal arguments, I just find them outdated and unsatisfactory.

Taking these arguments to what I see as their logical but unsatisfactory conclusion:

* since as argued duplication in different jurisdictions is OK, why should an American desiring new arms waste the time and effort to be original?  All that is required is to be the first here to copy some nice design from the College of Arms website and post it somewhere on a server in the US, and thumb our noses at any heraldic bluestockings who whine about infringement.

* or by similar logic, how dare we criticise the entrepreneurial spirit of Arms R Us down at the mall for doing the same on their customers’ behalf, at least for the first instance of recycling a particular foreign coat of arms?

* and for those of us with Scottish or Scotch-Irish roots, why bother with the fuss of indeterminate cadency when we can just go window-shopping in Balfour-Paul or the web for a pretty brisured version of the arms associated with our Clan or Name, so long as the heir hasn’t immigrated to the States and no other armorial squatter has beaten us to the punch?  Same for any other ethnic roots…

Seriously, we would never knowingly tolerate any of this in our own forum.  What some may tolerate for aspirin branding or fake Gucci bags or gen-u-ine "Rolex" watches due to lax enforcement of lack-lusture legal standards shouldn’t, and doesn’t, justify such a low bar here.

And in my mind, while the various official heralds may hide behind an outdated jurisdictional view of originality, they are charging large sums while holding themselves to a lower standard than we apply in offering free assistance for "mere" assumptions.

Not my most diplomatic posting - apologies.

Michael,

Thanks for your thoughts.  Your reference to squatter got me thinking.

In the US, because we don’t have a heraldic authority, first use of arms typically constitutes "right of use".  In jurisdictions with a heraldic authority it’s not first use that counts, it’s official sanction in the form of a grant that establishes a right of use.

As a result, we in the US may be guilty of scrupulosity in terms of our approach towards duplication.  Countries with heraldic authorities may tend towards the opposite- duplication of known arms outside their jurisdiction- in a sort of heraldic arrogance.

I don’t think, though, that Americans who pursue foreign grants would feel cheated if it turns out that there is some amount (hopefully unintentional) of duplication with existing assumed arms. I just don’t think that’s what’s in their minds…

David

David - a fair overview - scrupulosity here vs arrogance elsewhere. . Between these two choices, I’ll stick with Door S.

But re: your last paragraph, two nits to pick: first, it’s not just a new foreign grant vs prior American assumption - the jurisdictional approach could as easily lead to duplicate grants from two foreign official sources.  If each grantee is a resident of the jurisdiction issuing his grant, then each grantee (and the granting office) can argue "jurisdiction" without regard to which was issued first.  But in any broader context (visiting, dealing with or perhaps moving to each others, or some third, jurisdiction)  someone is likely to feel, or be seen as, having been cheated.

Another scenario could involve duplication (or excessive similarity) between a foreign grant/certification/etc to an American, and an assumption by some other American.  Since the foreign herald and his grant have no legal standing outdide his own jurisdiction, and his grant to an American has no higher standing here, legal or moral, than a pure assumption - an oft-stated principle by many here - the better claim to the arms would be judged by the same criteria as two conflicting assumptions - generally, which came first?  (There are special considerations in our Guidelines for long-standing good-faith duplications, so for now I’m only addressing possible recent infringements.).

There is of course an American "rule" (best-practice expectation or rule of thumb) of "reasonable" due diligence before assuming new arms here - one can’t be reasonably faulted for not avoiding some obscure, non-published use that reasonable due diligence would not discover - and our on-line design discussions can be most helpful given the range of backgrounds and research resources of the group. But the jurisdictional theory held by at least some official heralds denies any similar expectation outside of their own parochial records.  We set the bar higher for ourselves - quite rightly IMO - than they set for themselves, at least in this key area.

Please don’t take this as wholesale trashing the COA, LL, CHA, CHI etc., all of which I respect in most ways.  Their design and artistic standards are admirable, and their personnel and products generally high quality; I just see what I believe to be a self-imposed blind spot in their clinging to jurisdictional blinders when it comes to avoiding infringement across political borders in an increasingly borderless world.

And while it may be that unintentional duplication may be a risk that the American grantee of foreign arms should know about (caveat emptor - part of Joe’s argument) or maybe won’t care about (David), that grantee isn’t the only injured party.

Due diligence in ensuring that doesn’t happen is easier with the US Heraldic Registry’s public database. Yet (and I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone at the USHR how to run their website—I’m very grateful that it exists) IMO it would be easier to prevent such accidents as duplication if the blazons were arranged as ordinaries. I could go through the names and search for a while before just giving up and crossing my fingers.

But let’s face it. The only people who truly are at risk of armorial usurpation ironically are those with arms granted. That’s because those are the very arms that bucket shop companies use in their certificates. Granted arms are doubly at risk because the CoA’s ordinaries are not on a public, computerized database. There is far less risk of assumed arms being used by others since most are publicized and bucket shop companies don’t go looking for them.

That said, I don’t think anyone who approaches the CoA to petition for arms does so to have their arms legally protected. And I think the more we beat the drum of the importance of legal protection, the more people will think heraldry is pointless. It’s the letters patent that one is really buying at the CoA. They can be a family document-heirloom. Others might petition the CoA, as we’ve seen, to have their arms recognized by the VOSJ or another order. But in terms of protection, I think the most the College can reasonably guarantee is that it won’t grant the same arms twice.

On the original thread topic, if I were a herald at the CoA my only motivation in steering the design would be in ensuring something is adequately differenced before an approval painting is done and agreed on. That’s because I’ve been told that the longest part of the process is in checking the ordinaries. In other words, they don’t want to waste their time if they know something is not differenced enough. As an example, the Windsor Herald told me that he once tried to count the number of demi lions in the archives and stopped at 2,400.

John Tunesi summed it up better than me. The keyword he repeatedly threw in was negotiate. To me that involves letting the other party submit the first concept—after you submit your initial list of ideas for charges and tinctures. I’ll qualify this by saying I received exactly the design I wanted from the CoA (I haven’t seen the approval painting yet). The herald steered the ship, but he didn’t push back on anything I asked for. I think if you already know something about heraldry and you know designs should be simple and yet unique, (and you’re patient in the negotiation) you’ll find an easier time with it and may get to 90% or better of what you want.

Jeff,

Were you actually using the arms you designed before you proposed them to and had them granted by the College?

Jeff - looking forward to seeing what the English heralds will grant you - and pleased to hear that you will apparently be granted what you asked for.

John - one quick comment re: searching the USHR name by name looking for possible duplication etc. - the USHR has a simple word search capacity, not limited to names.  If you are considering, say, three seagulls, you can simply search for seagull and it will list every registration mentioning one or more seagulls regardless of surname.  You can then click on each of the search results to quickly see if it’s of concern.  The search menu also has instructions for more detailed searches.

Just a thought.  If as it appears that there is a negotiation process (or at least a back & forth discussion)  between the petitioner/memorialist and the foreign herald before the design is finalized, and that the heralds in one country generally don’t check for duplication outside their own records, maybe the petitioner could, or even should, do his own homework (reasonable due diligence) before agreeing on the final design,  to protect both his own interests and those whose existing arms might otherwise be infringed. 

Joseph McMillan;104784 wrote:

Jeff,

Were you actually using the arms you designed before you proposed them to and had them granted by the College?

Joe,

No. Not exactly:

The CoA asked me for initial design ideas after the Memorial was submitted. I knew only enough about heraldry to be dangerous to myself (I think I called myself out already in the past on having read the parts on artwork in A. F-D’s book). So I picked tinctures and described a bunch of charges on a document and I told the herald he could pick some or none of them for the design if he wanted. But those were only the suggestions I had to offer. Then I joined the AHS in Dec or Jan. I read a lot of thread topics and read a coffee-book by Stephan Slater. I imagine heraldry is like understanding antiques or anything else. I think it takes seeing a lot of heraldry images in addition to reading about it before one starts to understand it. So I looked at a lot of designs available online and compared them to see how other people developed their designs.

Anyway; by around April or May of this year I had settled on a design in my own head that I thought would work and doodled it. I didn’t share it with the herald though.

At the one-year mark, I got the initial concept ideas back in the form of blazons in an email. Surprisingly, he used all of the charges I had suggested a year ago in the full achievement; surprisingly, they were balanced and not cluttered! It was pure luck that he happened to give me almost exactly the shield I had decided I wanted for myself when I scribbled it out months ago. I’m sure I could have tweaked it to make it exactly what I wanted, but I liked his design better. In lieu of the crest he suggested, I proposed the new one I had in mind (one detail at a time) and he accepted it. He was pretty reassuring and wanted to make sure I got what I wanted.

To be honest, I sort of wanted all of the ideas to come from him and I originally regretted sending those charges by the time I joined AHS. But when it felt like he really wanted me to do the lifting on designing the arms, I fell back on the little sketch I made. And I’m satisfied with that.

Michael F. McCartney;104787 wrote:

Just a thought.  If as it appears that there is a negotiation process (or at least a back & forth discussion)  between the petitioner/memorialist and the foreign herald before the design is finalized, and that the heralds in one country generally don’t check for duplication outside their own records, maybe the petitioner could, or even should, do his own homework (reasonable due diligence) before agreeing on the final design,  to protect both his own interests and those whose existing arms might otherwise be infringed. 

That’s right-on. In my case, the use of bowls as charges doesn’t seem to be especially popular or common in heraldry. So I’m safe.

Looking forward to seeing the result!

JJB;104790 wrote:

Joe,

No. Not exactly:

 

.

Thanks, Jeff.  The reason I asked was that this is all consistent with how I’ve understood the College to work in the modern era.  What I’m skeptical of is that the College would allow someone who has been publicly and notoriously using an assumed coat of arms without a grant to "legitimize" (in their view) those identical arms simply by paying the grant fees.  I have read/heard too many examples where arms that had been used in a family for decades or even longer, and which did not duplicate any other arms on record at the College, were granted only subject to differences being imposed.

An example is the arms of Jeaffreson/Jefferson, the president’s cousins, which first appear in the late 1600s toward the tail end of the visitations, are all over the family’s 18th century tombs and monuments at Pettistree parish church in Suffolk, but when finally granted to a member of the family in the early 19th century were altered, both in the arms (the chief was made indented) and the crest (ermine spots added to the ears of the talbot’s head).

My impression is that the CoA today is not as fussy as it must have been in those days. I wouldn’t say that they don’t care. But I would say that they seem busy with many things and that they have probably seen everything by now. They might pick their battles more carefully today.

I don’t know how the CoA would respond if a petitioner opened his discussions with, "I have arms that my family has been using for many decades and I would like to have those granted to me". If I were the herald, my initial instinct would be to lower the petitioner’s expectations to avoid causing disappointment. Sadly, I think some petitioners might take that as a solid “no” and give up. I do know that it’s possible for someone to get what they want by taking the design one step at a time with the herald (again, assuming there are no duplications).

But each case is different. I think the CoA has a phobia of heraldic lions for example. Regardless of how well researched and differenced the petitioner’s design is in reality, the herald might do anything to talk the petitioner out of a lion to avoid researching the ordinaries.

Concerning some here; would assumed arms that are well-known among heraldic scholars (including the CoA) be altered by the CoA for no good reason upon a grant? That’s a good question. And it seems more akin to the Jefferson family situation since he was well-known. To do something like that out of spite though would be pretty rude. Hopefully it wouldn’t happen today. The herald I had is one of the more-experienced ones with more years behind him and less to prove. And he was very easy-going and indulgent.

There are a lot of “ifs” and “maybes” and “probably’s” in everything I said. Hopefully it helps though. If someone needs some concrete reasons not to go to the CoA, I can offer about ten good ones. But a potential change to assumed arms isn’t one of them; because I don’t think the arms would change much if they are sufficiently differenced to begin with. Of course if someone already has bookplates and other personal heraldic items made of assumed arms then I can’t see much point in getting granted arms.

JJB;104813 wrote:

Of course if someone already has bookplates and other personal heraldic items made of assumed arms then I can’t see much point in getting granted arms.

I don’t get this part. If you have arms, why wouldn’t you want to use them in every way you can. I don’t see it as incompatible with wanting a grant of the same arms or a matriculation.

JJB;104813 wrote:

Of course if someone already has bookplates and other personal heraldic items made of assumed arms then I can’t see much point in getting granted arms.

Me neither.  But then, I can’t see much point in an American citizen getting a grant of arms from a foreign state anyway.