Inspired by the GQ thread “Annoying Messianic Neighbor”, which is surely soon to be moved into GD. There is a lot of back and forth over there about who gets to call themselves Jewish.
What are the legal obstacles to defining a competing religion as a violation of intellectual property, trademark, or slander laws?
Here’s an elaborate example: Let us say I found some die-hard chocolate lovers, got a building, and set up the Collaborative Church of Cocoa Catholics, (C4) which in practice was similar to existing catholic churches with the major exceptions that:
Obviously, there would be no ordained priest.
Services were led by someone who volunteered from the congregation that day
Communion was open to anyone, and conducted with cups of milk and chocolate bars.
Then we went on a conversion crusade, setting up kiosks to give out free milk and chocolate to passerby in exchange for accepting our literature and listening to a little speech about what it was like in C4 and the lowered emphasis on everyone being a sinner, etc.
Now, is C4 impersonating anyone? By calling themselves Catholic, do the chocolate bombers commit slander or trademark infringement on the Roman Catholic Church? Is the use of catholic prayers and devotional symbols a violation of copyright or trademark laws? And what legal obstacles would the local Roman Catholic diocese have to overcome in order to succesfully file a cease-and-desist order?
It could be said that a church, as place to conduct religion, sells a product, and that product is access to salvation. Would not any misrepresentation about the ability of that church to deliver salvation constitute fraud?
Requirements for ordination are established by the church in question, so if an ordained preist in your church must eat a pound of chocolate and yodel the opening verses of your newly written bible, then you’re in.
Part of the joys of separation of church and state is that the state does not tell you how to believe or the requirements of your faith.
Many of the source documents of the liturgy are far to old to be protected, but new translations and revisions can be and often are copyrighted. The word “Catholic” and the cross and crucifix are also far too old and common to be protected, but more recent names and symbols can be and are registered as trademarks. The name “United Methodist” and the Cross and Flame logo are trademarks, and I imagine most other names and logos of Protestant churches are, too.
Words like “Jew” and “Judaism,” as well as the Magen David are likewise ineligible for protection, but names like “Union for Reform Judaism” and “Orthodox Union,” as well as the circle-U symbol can be (and no doubt are) recognized as trade- or service-marks, whether or not they are registered. I’d be surprised if the prayerbooks of the Reform and Conservative organizations aren’t copyrighted. I’m almost positive “Jews for Jesus” is a trademark.
WRT you proposal, as long as you do not foster confusion between your organisation and the RCC, and base your services on liturgies and other sources published before 1928, you’ll be in the clear. At least in this life.
Thanks, Alan, that’s probably the best response I’m going to get. I really believe there’s some important underlying legal principal here, but I don’t know how to get at it.
Now I just need to decide if it’s worth creating another, slightly different new thread.
Actually, most modern translations of the Bible are copyrighted, as well as several 20th Century “Scriptures” for decidedly odd groups – Oahspe was copyrighted but is now in the public domain, as is also the case with The Urantia Book. The Book of Common Prayer has never been copyrighted.
No “attempt” about it. If you create a creative work, it’s automatically copyrighted, with no need for you to do anything about it, and it stays copyrighted automatically for a set term of years (which would not yet be expired, for something as recent as Scientology). It’s a lot easier to enforce a copyright if it’s registered, but even that’s not too hard, if you know to do it, and given that L. Ron Hubbard was previously in the business of producing intellectual property, he surely would have. I’m no fan of the Scientologists, but in this, at least, they’re in the clear (so to speak): Their religious documents are copyrighted.
For an actual example, there is the dispute between the TE-TA-MA foundation, and the racist “church of the Creator.”
Short version: the Chicago-based “World Church of the Creator” was a nasty white supremacist group under the leadership of a guy named Matt Hale, that literally worshipped the white race as the source of creation. However, there was another organization, called the TE-TA-MA “Truth” Foundation’s Church of the Creator.
The TE-TA-MA group had trade-marked the “Church of the Creator” phrase. When they found out about the white supremacist group, they were quite upset. I don’t remember the details of their belief system, but I think they were sort of a New-Agey tree-hugging group - not the kind to want to be associated with white supremacists. They went to Federal Court to stop Hale’s merry little group from using the phrase “Church of the Creator.” Hale’s group was successful in the District Court, but the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and found a trademark infringement. They returned the case to the District Court judge and told her to deal with it in accordance with their decision. She gave a remedy to the TE-TA-MA folks, ordering Hale’s group to stop using the phrase on any of their materials.
Hale went off the deep-end and tried to have the District Court judge killed. He’s currently in the big house.
So yes, religious groups can trademark elements of their liturgy, names, etc., and the courts will enforce the trademarks.
Okay, so there are some much better real-world examples here now! That’s good!
Maybe I can better clarify what I’m getting at now:
Let’s say I’ve become disgusted with the gluttonous, sinful ways of C4, and I leave the church I founded to follow the guidance of Tetragon Maru, secret lieutenant in exile of the Great Xenu. For 75 million years she has been dedicated to his exodus from ancient bondage and the rebuilding of the galactic empire, and to this end she transmits messages to all humans via gravity waves, which are disrupted by proximity to cathode ray tubes. I begin doing a circuit of liberal-arts college student centers, disguising her gospel as study skills training and relationship advice, and amass a significant following.
Of course The Church of Scientology objects to this and sues me for copyright infringement and other assorted damages.
At this point, my many loyal followers, who find the practical, no-nonsense life advice and prohibitions against using outdated electronics of Universal Exodianism a godsend, come to my defense and put forth the following argument in court:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
In this case, copyright law is now preventing people from excercising their relgion. How will the court respond to this?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
You can only think this is true if you utterly ignore over 200 years of actual history and actual court cases.
You can’t use religion as an excuse to break the law. You can’t commit murder and use religion as an excuse. You can’t commit armed robbery and use religion as an excuse. You can’t break the copyright or trademark laws and use religion as an excuse. Etc. Simple as that.
Ideas can not be protected, only the expression of them. You can teach whatever you want about Xenu, as long as you don’t misrepresent yourself as The Church of Scientology, and don’t publish anything that violates their copyright. You can purchase legal copies of Dianetics and distribute them to your followers, but you can’t distribute copies of their teachings about Xenu, because they won’t sell you a copy. You can describe in speech or writing what you remember of their teachings or learn from South Park without claiming that they are your original creation. Being Scientologists, they’ll sue you anyway, and the court will have to decide whether you have essentially copied their work, or merely described their teachings.
IANAL. Everything I know about intellectual property law, I learned from reading previous threads on the Straight Dope!
Okay, but how do you codify this legal principal? Because it looks like it is not just saying that there is a ‘wall of separation’ between church and state: it seems to be saying that whenever relgious practice and the law contradict, the law always takes precedence.
Isn’t that a tacit denial of the validity of any religious practice?
How did churches and synagogues deal with prohibition? Was sacramental wine excepted from it?
It’s an odd balancing act, which a good constitutional lawyer would have to explain. Simplest way to put it is that if it’s a requirement on the faithful, it’s protected by the free exercise clause. But if it’s a praiseworthy but not mandatory act of faith, it can be regulated by the state.
For example, and I believe these are both real cases, a public park was required to remove its ban on religious services, because the stream in the park was the only reasonable place in which a full-immersion baptism could be conducted without undue expense to the church in building and maintaining a “baptism tank.” But a church planning to conduct a “soul-saving revival weekend” was required to abide by municipal ordinances on large public gatherings that required adequate public parking, employing police officers to direct traffic and maintain order in the crowd, etc.
To me, it’s saying that the church has the right to its own beliefs and practices but must remain in conformity with reasonable requirements for living in a community.
I’m positive the Volstead Act explicitly exempted sacramental wine, wine for Jewish feasts, etc., where it’s a requirement of the faith in question. But I don’t have a cite on that; perhaps someone else may quickly locate one.
You’re right, of course. There were actually quite a number of exceptions to the Volstead Act. People today seemingly get most of their information about Prohibition from gangster movies.
And of course the way the Volstead Act worked is exactly the way all interaction between the law and religion works. The “wall of separation” is made of cinder blocks with their two holes wide open. The law almost always bends over backward to be accommodating to religion. The times it doesn’t, work themselves out on a case-by-case basis.
But common sense is key. The law is not etched in stone like the commandments; it is a daily exercise in compromise and negotiation. Religion is allowed extremely free practice in this country. But I still say you can’t use religion as an excuse to break the law. Not only won’t the law stand for it, but the established religions won’t either. They have too much at stake.
Okay, let’s see what I seem to have learned from working on this thread so far:
A religious belief is an idea, and an idea can’t be copyrighted. Ideas are also protected by the first amendment, even when practices are not. So you are free to believe that holding boistrous midnight parties celebrating Xenu’s Greatness will grant you his goodwill, and you are free to express this belief to others, but you still can’t wake up your neighbors.
Recent religious texts, and new translations of old religious texts, can be and are copyrighted.
A church can trademark their name and symbols, provided they meet the same requirements for registrability that any other legal entity’s trademarks would have to meet. You also can’t appropriate trademarked material simply by calling it religion: if that curve-thingy that the Coca-Cola company puts on its products became the Universal Exodian’s holy symbol for the continuity of being or some such, the UE defense of the symbol’s use would have to be based on mundane defences like indistinctiveness and fair use.
Somewhere or other, somebody has written down a list with a title like “Marshal’s Hierarchy of Rights”. That is, there is an established precedence between recognized rights. One precedence is a person’s right not to be the subject of torts or crimes over another person’s right of free excercise of religion. I’d love to know when and how precedent was set for this.
Essentially, the free excercise clause only makes laws interfering with religious practices unconstitutional if they are ‘victimless crimes’.
Does anyone see anything I’m misunderstanding in there?
Okay, new issues:
As Cecil says in his column on the Second Amendment, there’s a great deal of uncertainty in what constitutes ‘regulation’. Shouldn’t there be some clause somewhere regarding undue obstruction?
Also, how does one determine what is required and what is merely praiseworthy? A catholic is required not to sin, but atonement is readily available. I don’t know enough about catholic sins to apply that one in a hypothetical situation, but the suggestion that a religious practice can be prohibited just because the faithful can get away with not doing it sounds loopy- loophole loopy.
Okay, first of all, I’m young enough that I’m not mislead into thinking that just because I bought a copy of a copyrighted work I own that copy. Can I sell those copies of Dianetics, or do I have to give them away?
Secondly, Hubbard claims to have discovered the story of Xenu’s alleged treachery through ‘research’ which seems to have consisted of sitting around thinking about what might be holding humanity back while ingesting mind altering substances. Why can’t I, as Prime Communicator for the Church of Universal Exodus, simply make the same discoveries of past factual events by similar methods (Tetragon’s transmissions are garbled, but with practice one can learn to decipher them) and then objectively report them in the next edition of our own book, Core Enlightenment? After all, you can copyright a newspaper article about a man tripping, but you can’t copyright the fact that he tripped.
In addition to all this, looking at information on patentability suggests that a sufficiently detailed religion, constituting a set of daily life practices, could be construed as a ‘useful process’ for physical and mental improvement, and be therefore patentable. Are there any succesfully patented diet and/or excercise regimens?
