Protection for charity logos

Logo design and trademarking are geuinely tricky, and there are very many talented people getting paid a lot of money to make company logos which are sharper, more contemporary, and more recognizable than the competitions'. I've just been reading about Product Red, a company set up by Bono (yes, the lead singer of U2) to create and market products which will be produced by (among others) Gap, American Express, Converse, and Giorgio Armani. People wil be able to buy Red hoodies in Gap using their Red credit cards, while wearing their Red sunglasses. The point is that a certain proportion of the money goes into the General Fund, a charitable fund which concentrates on AIDS projects for African women and children.

This is all very praiseworthy, but it does bring to light the fact that chairities are increasingly competing on level terms with companies for a share of our money. What's more, we have to be able to pick out these logos, and know the stories behind them. We have to be able to know what a Product Red logo stands for, and I'd certainly like to know what proportion of money goes to charity. Sheesh. More information to carry around in my head. Great.

This isn't the first time this sort of tie-in between charity and corporation has happened. And I foresee a lot of these sort of schemes cropping up. But if they become too common, then the novelty is lost and their logos and marketing will just become lost in the normal background scream of advertising that we live with.

So I suggest a piece of legislation which prevents a company's product using using one simple graphical element - for the sake of argument, let's say the circle - unless a certain proportion of their revenue from that product goes to charity. To some extent, this happens already in the UK with the crossed ribbon logo, used by AIDs and breast cancer awareness charities. But there's nothing to stop evil marketing wizards from piggy-backing on this sort of goodwill by making their own logos look 'charity-ish'. So let's ringfence the circle and say, "This can only be used for products and services which donate a certainamount to charity."

If this sounds tricky, then, well, all logo trademarking law is a bit a nightmare, frankly. Of course there'd be legal challenges, etc. There are at the moment, anyway.