BBC threatens The Drum with legal action over logo use
BBC threatens The Drum with legal action over logo useThe BBC has threatened The Drum with legal action claiming a report about a £1.7m procurement tender and the ‘unauthorised’ use of its ‘block’ logo was ‘particularly damaging’ to the Corporation.
The organisation – which collects around £3.4billion in Licence fees every year – instructed a lawyer to point out that the website got the date of the tender deadline and technical structure of the process itself wrong.
Rather than August 8, as reported, the deadline is August 18, and rather than appointing more than one supplier the Corporation plans to appoint only one.
However, it argued that the report caused damage because if true it would constitute a breach of the BBC's tender regulations.
The same letter also argued that The Drum’s use of the BBC logo also amounted to ‘copyright infringement’ which it said was also ‘particularly damaging’. It warned The Drum that in future it must seek written permission from the BBC before the logo is used by the website again.
Said Gordon Young editor of The Drum: “On a day when our website is reporting potential industrial action because of BBC staff cut-backs it is extraordinary to discover the BBC is using its resources to issue this sort of legal letter.
“Due to an error of transmission our piece did get these two small points wrong, which have now been corrected. But a simple email would have sufficed.
“In terms of their branding, The Drum will continue to use the BBC logo in our news reports about the BBC. After all the BBC regularly uses the logos of the organisations it reports on.”
See the full letter here.
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Comments
comments
They seem quite right. Maybe The Drum should consider adopting a new policy of actually checking facts before publishing? Or you could just continue acting like petulant children who've been told off and won't take the blame....
Hahaha awesome!
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Completely agree with Robert Hope. Getting dates and basic facts wrong is sloppy journalism. Am pleased the BBC take these things seriously, hopefully The Drum will take it seriously as well.
I have commented countless times on The Drums poor journalism (and typos!). The question is, did you recieve permission to use their logo on this article?! ha!
Your fault is clear. The permission should be given by the logo owner for all logo's displayed on any site not just this one.
However, the profile of The Drum is greater than many and as such the articles that they write tend to provoke some reactions. If it was a good article about the BBC would they have reacted the same way? Free publicity I think they would have loved. But, as the article is not bad for the image of the BBC they are fighting back....
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