Bitcoin Forum

I'm selling generic label Electronic Cigarettes, but I can brand them. I'm thinking of using the bitcoin B's to incorporate into the logo/design/name somehow. It will help spread the word of BTC to smokers.

Before I do so, I want to make sure I'm not going to be sued down the road..

After reading your post, i went placed a copyright on the BTC as per used on anything that can possibly be inhaled. Thanks for the heads up. I would consider selling you a non-exclusive license that would allow you to use the BTC on your inhalable products for BTC2000 per year.

I would also be willing to accept a lesser sum of you telling me to fuck off, and that you are just going to use the BTC as your logo.

P.S.  I also offer my amateur legal services for 55BTC per hour.  Let me know.

Well, there's never been any claim brought to the community that the B with two vertical lines has been registered as a trademark symbol,     That doesn't mean every raster or vector art image using it can be copied though.    

Here are some promotional graphics, and some of them have sources listed in the references at the bottom.
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Promotional_graphics

i.e., you're probably safe using any of those.

I think the legal concept to which you intended to refer was trademark, not copyright.  As to whether anyone has sought to register any Bitcoin-related trademarks, I don't know.  I somewhat doubt it, but I could be wrong. You'd want to have an IP lawyer look that up for you before proceeding further.  IANAL, YMMV, etc. etc. etc.

Just as an aside, if I had a trademark of any sort and found someone was misappropriating it to put on cancer sticks, I'd be more than a little bit pissed off. Getting a lawyer involved would be a good idea if a potential Bitcoin trademark holder were to be of a similar opinion.

I thought I saw when it was published in the forum and that the person who made it put it in the public domain.

That would make it fair game.  (And if it somehow wasn't, I still don't think the author would mind.  It's on the side of NEFT Vodka)

The most common logo seen is released under "public domain" license:

https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=1756.0

The original Bitcoin logo/icon was released with the client under an MIT license.

Thank you, trademark is probably more appropriate of what I'm looking for.
As for cancer sticks, ecigs are not cancer sticks they don't have any of the toxins cigarettes have with the exception of nicotine, half of what's in the liquid is in food.

And thanks to everyone else who replied, I think I'm satisfied with the responses.

Lawyer Trying To Trademark Bitcoin Threatens Techdirt With Bogus DMCA Takedown
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110719/00513815159/lawyer-trying-to-trademark-bitcoin-threatens-techdirt-with-bogus-dmca-takedown.shtml (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110719/00513815159/lawyer-trying-to-trademark-bitcoin-threatens-techdirt-with-bogus-dmca-takedown.shtml)

Shades of the Linux trademark kerfuffle (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2559)?  There was no DMCA back in 1997, but there was a jackwagon who tried appropriating "Linux" as his own so he could extort fees from distributors. 

Ha ha ha the very nature of BTC makes it very hard to copyright. And how would you enforce a copyright? Sounds a bit like trying to enforce movie copyright to me :P

As for the logo, I don't think using it would be a problem... As long as you make it clear you are not representing BTC but just using the public domain logo.

Bitcoin logos and their subsidiaries should all have a copyleft symbol to show that they can be used for free by as many as possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft)