Testfrenzy Legal Updates |
December 17 2009
FBLA COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT NOTICE
From: EducationSpec@fbla.org
Your site, http://testfrenzy.com, appears to offer FBLA tests and study guide materials. FBLA is the registered trademark of the Future Business Leaders of America Phi Beta Lambda. All of our tests carry out the FBLA trademark. Duplication or distribution of our tests without prior written consent is a violation of our copyrights.
We request that you immediately remove (within 48 hours of receipt of this notice) all tests (files at boxed.net & hyperlinks) that are trademarked by FBLA and that you remove any reference to FBLA on your site. Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter.
RE: FBLA COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT NOTICE
From: admin@testfrenzy.com
Thank you for informing me about this copyrighted material. I looked at some of the links, and none of the ones I looked at had a copyright. A majority of the materials linked to by my site were taken from State FBLA pages such as www.azfbla.org and, as far as I was aware, do not have copyrights. Then-FBLA President Michael Yaroshefsky stated that "even thought states may create their own test questions such as Arizona, they aren't endorses by us and thus we don't link the questions." I can forward this email to you if you would like. From his statement, it appeared to me that these state tests are in no way related to National FBLA. Can you please provide the specific list of the specific materials linked to that are in violation of Future Business Leaders of America – Phi Beta Lambda copyrights?
According to www.ChillingEffects.org, an archive created by several law schools to protect lawful online activity from legal threats, there are two legal clauses permitting the use of the trademarked term "FBLA" on the Testfrenzy site, Fair Use and Non-competing or Non-confusing use.
ChillingEffects describes Fair Use as "the term is a way to describe another good or service, using its descriptive term and not its secondary meaning. The idea behind this fair use is that a trademark holder does not have the exclusive right to use a word that is merely descriptive." In addition, these terms qualify for Non-competing or Non-confusing Use. Testfrenzy is not offering or selling any products competing with anything offered or sold by National FBLA. This is belayed by Testfrenzy's footer on every page in its FBLA subdomain stating "FBLA is a registered trademark of FBLA-PBL, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse this web site." I would be happy to modify this footer in any reasonable way as specified by Future Business Leaders of America – Phi Beta Lambda.
September 8 2008
FBLA-PBL asked my old website host, www.brinkster.com to delete my old domain, http://fblatests.brinkster.net on the baseless grounds of copyright infringement. Nonetheless, the request was complied with and brinkster deleted the pages.May 14 2008
FBLA-PBL Logos
From: Education@fbla.org
Note you are in copyright violation using the FBLA-PBL logos on this Web site. Please remove them. Also you need to put a disclaimer this is not endorsed by the FBLA-PBL national organization.
RE:FBLA-PBL Logos
From: admin@testfrenzy.com
To: Education@fbla.org
I will remove the FBLA logos from the page next time I update it. With my limited knowledge of copyrights, I do not know why I need a disclaimer and I would appreciate the legal reasoning behind it.