As anybody who has been following my twitter stream today knows, I have been spending the entire day hunting, pecking, avoiding, and kind of working on my final exam for my Intellectual Property Law Class.
While working on the exam, I have found some real legal gems today. These kinds of things don't often turn up unless you know to look for them, and since I'm betting nobody ever looks, I figured I'd share them here.
- First, a warm up. May I present the laws that protects the Red Cross, and The Olympics?
- Or, perhaps the ones that define and protect (sort of) America's anthem (Star Spangled Banner), motto ("In God we trust"), floral emblem (the rose), march (Stars and Stripes Forever), and tree (the mighty oak)?
- Maybe you'd prefer a list of the national observances that are codified by law, such as the May, the Steelmark month?
- And finally, those laws that govern the inauguration, including the regulations of the electricity that day.
America, sometimes you have the strangest laws.
Not to be all like that, but the Red Cross law is actually fairly important, and was presumably enacted following the Geneva Conventions. Red Cross / Red Crescent personnel are internationally recognized neutral parties, who get to cross enemy lines in wartime and not get shot, because of their commitment to treat the wounded on both sides. In order for this system to work, you need to have reasonable safeguards in place to make sure that no one else gets to impersonate them by wearing the emblems. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblems_of_the_International_Red_Cross_and_...
Though I think it's pretty funny that in a typically American move, we allowed marketing trademarks like that of Johnson & Johnson to be grandfathered in.
Fair enough. I've never met a Geneva Convention I didn't like....but electricity on inauguration day? Madness I say.
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