Football Liberec has had the Ještěd mountain towering over the city in its emblem since the sixties, which was later supplemented by the silhouette of a transmitter in the shape of a rotating hyperboloid by the architect Karel Hubáček (1924-2011). It still uses the outlines of 20th century Czech architecture, but an audit during the sale of the club revealed ambiguities that the club wants to remove before the planned rebranding.
“The club had a contract with the architect’s heirs, who still hold the copyright, but it was terminated in April 2019, even though it was for a fee of one thousand crowns per year,” revealed Slovan’s new owner Ondřej Kania after taking over the club from long-time owner Ludvík Karel.
According to Sport.cz, the previous management of Slovan terminated the contract because the rights holders allegedly demanded a higher license fee. Since then, the Liberec trademark has been the subject of a dispute. And, for example, for this reason too, the winner of the Podještědský derby stopped accepting the glass prize for the winner with the image of a transmitter made ten years ago.
Photo: Radek Petrášek, CTK
Sunset over Ještěd as seen from the stands of the football stadium in Jablonec nad Nisou, April 2, 2024.
“Theoretically, it can happen, I’m not saying it will happen, but it’s not an unrealistic thing that the club will be forced to remove the Ještěd transmitter from its logo,” Kania pointed out, adding that he and the heirs of copyright after Karl Hubáček about the further use of Ještěd in the club’s character will act. “I hope that the agreement will be successful and Ještěd will remain there at least as a hint. I can’t imagine the sign without it,” remarked one of Liberec’s most prominent supporters, Ladislav Hampl, who has been a fan of the blue and white club for 31 years.
According to information from Sport.cz, Kania has already contacted the legal office representing the heirs of Karel Hubáček. “At this moment, I would not like to comment more on the situation,” said Rudolf Leška from the Štaidl-Leška law firm, which manages the copyrights to the Ještěd radio station, which was ceremonially opened 51 years ago.
Four years ago, in an interview for MD Dnes, regarding the results of similar disputes about the use of the shape of Ještěd, Leška said: “The decisions concerned the use of Ještěd in board games, on various souvenirs, use in amusement parks, sometimes the subject of the dispute was the missing indication of authorship, which the defendant did not want to correct , other times the subject of the dispute is a trademark with the Ještěd motif. There is also a decision of the Supreme Court from earlier years, which concerned the use of Ještěd as a carafe of a liquor set” and that “it is necessary to remember that the freedom of the panorama allows anyone to photograph or draw the landscape with Ještěd, but not to change the work or associate it with the brands of any goods.”
For example, the heirs’ dispute with the Kingdom of Railways in Prague, which placed a model of Ještěd in its exhibition, came to the fore. Since both parties did not agree on the amount of the license fee, the exhibitor had to remove the imitation transmitter.
In this case, however, it was a three-dimensional work, otherwise flat images are used. Section 33 of the Copyright Act states that “the person who records or expresses a work by means of a drawing, painting or graphic, photograph or film or otherwise, which is permanently located in a square, street, park, public road or other public space” and at the same time in paragraph 29 “the use of the work does not conflict with the normal way of using the work, nor does it unreasonably affect the legitimate interests of the author.”
“I would lean towards the fact that in this case it is not in any way contrary to the normal way of using the work, because if the architect placed the building in some public space, where he makes it a dominant feature of Liberec, then it is a matter of using the symbolism intended by him himself. But these are all subjective interpretations, a binding assessment can only be determined by a court,” stated Aleš Kout, a specialist in copyright, which he has been dealing with for over thirty years.
2024-04-12 15:03:43
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