Sarajevo's City Government Says No One Can Use The Name 'Sarajevo' Without Its Permission

from the Sarajevo:-Where-the-Name-Sarajevo-Goes-to-Die dept

The city of Sarajevo passed a law in 2000 forbidding anyone but the city of Sarajevo from using the name Sarajevo. Not much has been said about it because the Sarajevo city council hasn't done much about it. But recently owners of Facebook pages containing the word "Sarajevo" have been receiving legal threats from the city's government.

Sarajevo resident Aleksandar Todorović wrote a long blog post detailing the stupidity of this law, which contains firsthand accounts of Facebook page owners who've been threatened with criminal proceedings for failing to secure permission to use the name of a city on their pages. As Todorović notes, his blog post is illegal, simply because it hasn't been pre-approved by Sarajevo's city council.

The law can be read here (and loosely translated by Google). It basically states the city owns the name and all others wishing to use it must ask the city council for permission before using it. It also states there are some requests that just aren't going to be granted.

The use of the name of the City of Sarajevo may be granted to legal entities for the purpose of entering the company or the name of the legal person and the name of the product, if their activity does not violate the reputation of the City of Sarajevo and contributes to its affirmation.

If an entity uses the name Sarajevo, it can face fines for not asking permission first.

Legal persons and natural persons who use the coat of arms and the name of the City of Sarajevo without the approval of the competent authority or who, contrary to the given authorization and this decision, misuse the coat of arms and the name of the City of Sarajevo, shall compensate the City of Sarajevo for any damage caused by such behavior.

There is no statutory limit to damages the city can assess. The following paragraphs leave that to courts to decide, following input from the city on the amount of "damage" it has sustained from unauthorized use of the city's name.

Those obtaining permission may dodge being assessed for damages, but that doesn't mean they won't be paying anything. The city will license its name to approved parties for an annual fee ranging from ~$60-3,000 a year, depending on the financial health of the entity. (The law gives non-profit entities the low end. The other ranges are determined by the number of people employed by companies using the city's name.)

For years, this law has been dormant. But for whatever reason, Sarajevo's government has started cracking down on Facebook pages using the city's name.

The administrator of [a] Facebook page [Sarajevo Forever] published a Facebook status containing this text on January 18th:

I have received a threatening letter from the city’s government in which they are warning me that I have to pay them a certain amount of money for the usage of the name Sarajevo in the name of my Facebook page. If I don’t start paying them, they will start their Facebook teams and contact the court so that they could shut down my Facebook profile.

According to that same author, this Facebook page isn’t the only one that got this message:

All other Facebook pages that promote the city and have the noun Sarajevo in its name got the identical threats.

And so, all of this is very real. The city council in Sarajevo contains full ownership over the name Sarajevo, in a legally-binding decision based upon an article of the law that defines what a city is, and the city’s Statute, which claims that the usage of the city’s symbols (but does not mention the name of the city as its symbol) are to be controlled by a separate legally-binding document published by the city’s council.

Those receiving quasi-C&Ds from the city of Sarajevo were told to respond within seven days or be faced with possible criminal prosecution. Those threats have now been dismissed by the city. Maybe someone up top had second thoughts or experienced a little backlash. Whatever the case, the city has now granted all Facebook pages permission to use the city's name without having to pay fees or face criminal charges. There's been no amendment to the city's statute, so this unofficial waiver could be revoked at any time.

As Todorović notes in his lawbreaking blog post, this law is every bit as stupid as other overreaching efforts at the intersection of government entities and intellectual property. He compares it to the European Union's decision to grant exclusive control of images of the Eiffel Tower at night to the country of France, thus banning anyone from photographing the tower after dark -- or at least preventing them from marketing or distributing these photos.

It may be the law was written to extract licensing fees from companies using the word "Sarajevo" in their names. It's still a stupid idea but that would have at least made sense in the way most licensing requirements work. But it's written to include both businesses and private individuals and it would apparently cover the name of city used descriptively to designate the location where things occurred -- like blog posts about stupid laws the city of Sarajevo has passed. City governments have no business trying to "own" their cities' names. Hopefully Todorović's post will gain enough traction the city council will be forced to scuttle this supremely stupid law. If a law turns you into a cartoonish supervillain the moment you try to enforce it, it's probably not worth the trouble to keep it on the books.

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