Tobacco Companies Think Their Trademarks Are More Important Than Your Health
from the who-needs-lungs-anyway? dept
Back in January of this year, Techdirt reported on tobacco companies suing a local Australian importer of their products for covering up part of their logos with a mandatory health warning. At the time, a spokeswoman for the company involved, British American Tobacco, said:As the matter is currently before the Court, BAT is unable to comment other than to say that this is a further demonstration that we will take all necessary steps to protect our valuable intellectual property.Given that stance, it will come as no surprise to learn that tobacco companies are now threatening to take on the European Commission as well:
EU Health Commissioner John Dalli will face legal action if he tries to reproduce Australia's plain-packaging proposals for cigarettes in Europe, a tobacco industry representative warned this week.The approach is the same as in Australia:
One likely focus of attack is intellectual property rights, since plain packaging has a smothering effect on companies' logos and trademarks.I'd like to think that the word "smothering" was taken verbatim from some tobacco company representative, because it sums up nicely the industry's attitude: that any breathing difficulties or respiratory diseases that you may develop as the result of smoking pale into insignificance compared with the outrageous "smothering" of their logos and trademarks.
That's a particularly callous attitude, because those logos and trademarks are only valuable to the degree they have been attached to products that have caused death and disease: the "best" brands are those with a track record of selling � and hence killing � more people than rival products. In effect, the tobacco companies are complaining that all their hard work getting people addicted and smoking themselves to death will be wasted if the plain-packaging proposals for cigarettes are implemented.
The cynical posturing of tobacco firms as the victims in these continuing attempts to undo and avoid the social harm they cause underlines once more how easily intellectual monopolies can be twisted for purposes far from any original justification they may once have had. Patents can kill: so, it seems will trademarks, if tobacco companies get their way.
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Filed Under: health, smoking, tobacco, trademarks
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Would such a ban affect smoking's perceived desirability?
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But ok, we don't want consumers being ripped off. So standardise it: Same packaging as the Tesco Value brand (like this: http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2006/11/value_175x125.jpg), the only difference between different companies' offerings is the name.
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Unfortunately, your freedom ends where mine begins, and neither I nor many of my fellow citizens wish to be subject to the adverse consequences of your bad choices.
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Every time...
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Re: Every time...
Heh yeah - a few times I've seen people ask for a different pack because they didn't want the one with the mouth.
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Re: Every time...
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Well
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I have a hard time seeing where any of it actually matters any more.
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I don't think this is fair to them.
Our least defended right is the right to make bad decisions. If people want to smoke, let them.
The last thing any smoker wants to hear is more health warnings, we know, we get it, we smoke anyways. People need to just step off it already.
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Yes - because EVERYTHING is black or white.
Polarization sucks!
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Not really
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Re: Not really
What specifically is "hugely exaggerated" and in what specific studies? Cites or it didn't happen.
"only because tobacco companies are one of those areas where we are allowed to be abusive be cause no one of significance will come to their defense."
Apparently I've been laboring under the misconception that massive corporations with worldwide presence and billions of dollars in profits didn't need anyone to come to their defense.
Now that I've been enlightened though I can see they're definitely down for the count because of those mean old people who want to keep kids and barmaids safe:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/22/us-tobacco-idUSTRE66L2PR20100722
Why it looks like their revenue last year was only $17.4B and they only made $2B. Oh, wait, that's just one tobacco company, isn't it? Those poor, poor, horribly abused little companies. Why I bet that kind of terrible treatment makes the baby Jesus cry and blow snot on his sleeve!
Of course I'm also laboring under the delusion that the tobacco companies still win 60% of the lawsuits filed against them. I suppose that because it's those "health nannies" at the Tobacco Institute who make that claim.
Oh, crap - sorry, I just realized when I turned off the caps lock I accidentally hit Ctrl+Sarcasm.
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I'm a smoker and I do feel I should have the right to kill myself very slowly if I want but I also agree that their should be restrictions on advertising tobacco. With a big enough budget you can sell anything to anybody. Last thing we need is a 200 million dollar campaign to get the next generation hooked early. I think they go a little far with the forced sometimes with the required pack warnings I mean really who at this point doesn't know that smoking is harmful?
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How much of that went to health care?
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Re: Our least defended right is the right to make bad decisions.
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I'm with a lot of posters here. We all know that smoking is bad for you. We don't need bigger warnings on the labels. I'm also of the mind that we ether need to make smoking illegal, or legal; none of this in between bullshit.
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I think that if people want to smoke let them but I don't think society should have to pick up their medical bills. If a smoker gets cancer and doesn't have money let them die.
Same with helmets on motorcycles. If you choose not to wear one you shouldn't expect heroic efforts to save you life when you crash.
Same with back-country snowmobilers and cross-country skiers, if you don't heed the warnings and get caught in an avalanche we'll look for you next July.
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http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/4048/PreviewComp/SuperStock_4048-7233.jpg
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Response to: Steerpike on Dec 1st, 2011 @ 8:20am
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Who is this author and why is he here?
Hey, I'm against putting a giant skull and crossbones with pictures of dead babies all over foods with trans fat in them. Am I going to Hell, Glyn?
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What about our freedoms?
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Re: What about our freedoms?
I was just diagnosed with breast cancer. My only risk factor: never had kids. Wonder what the risk factor was for the four other women in my family that had the same cancer but do have kids? My second cousin who also never had kids but is battling cervical cancer?
I know, all anecdotal, proves nothing except that cancer fucking happens, no matter what you do or don't do. We are at the point where the emphasis must be on better (and for god's loving sake, more humane) detection and treatment and a goddamn cure already. Just being alive is bad for you, no amount of prevention will spare you. You are made of cells and it might happen that some of them decide to become cancer. Or it might not.
All this dorking around with labels is pointless. Forcing tobacco, fast food, liquor, xray machine, construction materials and car companies to fund and find a cure would be a far more interesting fight to watch.
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Re: Re: What about our freedoms?
I'm all for this, but one would think they would be doing this already. It brings good will and helps your clients die less often.
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All the time, money, hours, research, testing...this is still all we have. Someone needs to up their game.
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"We're dealing with medievalism here."
- Dr. Leonard McCoy, Star Trek IV
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My wife has gone through thyroid cancer this year. Fortunately it appears to be taken care of. It quite likely was caused by the radioactive iodine they gave her 10 years ago to deaden her overactive thyroid. So yea, I agree you, it seems for all the advancements in medicine we have had we still seem to be in the middle ages for a lot of things.
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I think we can safely say that smoking can be harmful in myriad ways. But so is radiation, and they apply that to humans all the time in the name of medical science. I start wondering what my future will be like after what I'll be exposed to and...
...that is why I'm on anxiety meds for the first time in my life.
Peace.
(anyone know where I can get some? ;)
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Re: Re: What about our freedoms?
Men who who ejaculate less than once per week have a 50% higher chance of getting prostate cancer than men who ejaculate at least 5 times per week. Assuming you start young(18).
Spread the word.
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This is what progressives are all about. telling you how to live your life and using the force of government to make you live it the way they want you to.
True freedom, true liberty, only happens when the government fears you, currently we fear our own government.
Wake up restore liberty!
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Seriously
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For every single one of you that thinks this is OK, please explain and justify why only tobacco companies have to do this? why not alcohol companies? because there is no way you can say tobacco is worse than alcohol? Just as many health issues, and significantly many more social and legal issues. I don't see too many people being charged with DUIs for smoking. I see and hear of just as many liver and health issues related to drinking. Drinking advertising is aimed at children just as much if not more than tobacco
Why aren't all the chips, and cookies and chocolate bars showing big ass pictures of overweight people?
Just because it is a product that is pretty much reviled, doesn't mean we can just say, oh this product is bad for you so we'll just mess with the packaging.
Either products fall under the same guidelines or its just the Gov trying to force themselves on us in another way. Whats to stop them from saying, hey we dont like this or that or the other thing so we'll just say that we're going to force you to market your product with a nasty picture on it because we feel like it.
I would be amazingly surprised if Mike had the same conclusions at the end of this article if he had written it.
Freedom\Trademark\IP must only be defensible to Glen if its a product he approves of, otherwise, sure use any excuse you want to mess with the trademark or packaging, I don't mind it when it happens to that company, they make tobacco products.
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Maybe a solution
Whenever someone dies from emphysema or the type of lung cancer that is almost always caused by smoking, they keep a tally. Below the logo in large digits is the number of dead smokers who smoked that particular brand. The count gets updated semiannually. Maybe add a 3D bar code that sends you to a website that maintains the current counts for each brand.
Gets the message across with minimal changes and has the added benefit of always driving people away from the best selling (i.e. highest death count) brands which screws all the tobacco companies (though not nearly as hard as they should be)
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Re: Maybe a solution
And of course this should be required of alcohol breweries.
Also, there's no reason why Big Bacon should be spared from this requirement. Lots of people die or have serious health problems from the fat in that deadly stuff.
Also, this could have saved lots of lives if it were required on cantaloupe farmers (anyone who bought cantaloupe recently knew they were playing Russian roulette you know).
And heaven only knows how many people could have been spared had this type of system been enforced on kitchen knife manufacturers.
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Government out of personal choice, end the f***ing war on American citizens.
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Smoking is not good for you, and cancer, to the burning lake with that terrible illness. But a legal product should only have to compromise so much when it comes to how they're identified.
When any product gets to this point wouldn't be simply better to end the hypocracy of considering it legal while making it impossible to consume, and just ban the stuff?
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Fred Singer (the guy behind the "climate change is fake" scam) always used the fact that the massive number of tobacco-related illness and deaths are "only" statistical. You can't point to a specific cigarette to a specific case of cancer, all you can do is say that the risk of cancer is n times higher for smokers. If a single entity like Ford or Boeing had statistics like the tobacco companies do, their products would not be legal in any country.
I'm all for putting the screws to them in any way possible. They kill people for profit.
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Tobacco Companies Scum
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Smoking... Tobacco and Adverts
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Back in January of this year, Techdirt reported on fast food companies suing a local Australian importer of their products for covering up part of their logos with a mandatory health warning. At the time, a spokeswoman for the company involved, McDonald's, said:
As the matter is currently before the Court, BAT is unable to comment other than to say that this is a further demonstration that we will take all necessary steps to protect our valuable intellectual property.
Given that stance, it will come as no surprise to learn that fast food companies are now threatening to take on the European Commission as well:
EU Health Commissioner John Dalli Jr. will face legal action if he tries to reproduce Australia's plain-packaging proposals for hamburgers in Europe, a fast food industry representative warned this week.
The approach is the same as in Australia:
One likely focus of attack is intellectual property rights, since plain packaging has a smothering effect on companies' logos and trademarks.
I'd like to think that the word "smothering" was taken verbatim from some fast food company representative, because it sums up nicely the industry's attitude: that any obecity or heart diseases that you may develop as the result of eating fast food pale into insignificance compared with the outrageous "smothering" of their logos and trademarks.
That's a particularly callous attitude, because those logos and trademarks are only valuable to the degree they have been attached to products that have caused man boobs and diariah: the "best" brands are those with a track record of selling � and hence killing � more people than rival products. In effect, the fast food companies are complaining that all their hard work getting people addicted and eating themselves to death will be wasted if the plain-packaging proposals for hamburgers are implemented.
The cynical posturing of fast food firms as the victims in these continuing attempts to undo and avoid the social harm they cause underlines once more how easily intellectual monopolies can be twisted for purposes far from any original justification they may once have had. Patents can kill: so, it seems will trademarks, if fast food companies get their way.
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What about fat people?
How about obese people? By now there's more of those in most western countries than there are smokers.
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Re: What about fat people?
My husband was denied life insurance due to an elevated PSA (which is indicative of several things, not just prostate cancer, btw). Turns out he did have prostate cancer, but they couldn't have known that from a blood test.
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Re: Re: What about fat people?
Smokers cost the public tens of billions annually, but they're perfectly okay with welfare for their benefit. They just don't like it when some out of work single mom gets some.
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Ignore Glyn
The title alone gets me really angry at the brainless fool writing it.
The truth is tobacco companies care about your health just as much as you care about your own health.
...Ugh I don't even want to continue this argument because it is too obvious why Glyn is completely wrong here...
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Victims...by choice????
so in short stop calling smokers victimes, we chose to smoke. If you really do care about our health that much then make the tobacco companies revert to using all NATURAL ingrediants and NO preservatives.
Coreoveride
smoker of 25 years, with lungs of a 2 year smoker thanks to buying preservative/chemical free tobacco. cram that in your pipe and smoke it.
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Re: Victims...by choice????
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Legal
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Re: Legal
Does that mean it should be advertised to 10-15 year old kids using cutesy logos and bright colors?
Changing the use of logos would put a dent in programs that target children.
http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?A=1772&Q=282504
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4175 2750/ns/us_news-life/t/feds-tobacco-firms-should-run-ad-campaign-admitting-they-lied/
http://www.yo rk.cuny.edu/yorkscholar/v1/pdfs/hull_tobacco_sp04.pdf
They're not talking about putting some restrictions on some poor, innocent little companies who just want to be left alone to sell their product to informed and consenting adults. We're talking about multi-billion dollar predators who when they couldn't advertise smoking to kids in the USA simply redirected their money to trying to get kids in Asia and Africa addicted as soon as they're out of the womb.
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