The AFL could be exposed to a costly lawsuit if its new Tasmanian team’s logo even remotely resembles the Looney Tunes cartoon character Taz the Tasmanian devil, lawyers have warned.
Tasmania was formally granted the 19th AFL team licence on Wednesday afternoon after being unanimously endorsed by the existing 18 clubs earlier this week.
The team name is yet to be announced, but in making the announcement at North Hobart Oval, outgoing AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan gave his backing to the use of the name “Devils”.
The AFL has already registered trademarks for the name “Tassie Devils” and “Tasmania Devils” with a final decision expected in mid-July.
McLachlan acknowledged there were potential legal issues if the name “Devils” was used, but said they could be navigated.
“Devils seems to make sense to me,” he said, before adding that any issues “can broadly can be worked through”.
“I know there are broad-minded people at Warner Bros. I imagine there will be a big push for that type of look.”
The league’s new chief executive, Andrew Dillon, has also admitted the name could cause AFL lawyers a few headaches, as Warner Bros already has a trademark related to its Tasmanian devil character, which first appeared in 1954.
Trademark lawyer Justin Lawrence, from Melbourne based firm Henderson & Ball Lawyers, said big money was at stake and the Warner Bros lawyers would “fiercely protect” its trademark.
“The AFL need to be eternally vigilant and ensure that if the Tasmanian devil cartoon character appears anywhere near them, they distance themselves entirely from it,” Henderson said. “Say ‘that’s not us’, or ‘we’re not connected with that’.”
“They need to say ‘we’re about the island of Tasmania and the marsupial that lives here, we’re not in any way interested in rolling out a competition in the space that you operate in’.”
Lawrence said the AFL would be able to defend a team named the Tasmanian Devils, as it could argue it was based on the native marsupial, known for its pungent odour and disturbing screeching, rather than the cartoon character loosely based on reality.
“An organisation like Warner Bros would have every single one of their images trademarked and they will protect it vigorously,” Lawrence said.
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“They will not muck around on this.”
But David Stewart, a principal at Perth based law firm Bennett, said he was confident the AFL and Warner Bros would be able to work out a commonsense agreement and avoid legal action.
“They’ll come up with some coexistence arrangement where they can both carry on and do what they need to do,” Stewart said. “No one is going to get a character that is used in a Bugs Bunny cartoon mucked up with the logo of an AFL football team.
“Warner Bros don’t have a statutory monopoly right, of any description, over an illustration of a Tasmanian devil, it’s just their Tasmanian devil. The fluffy thing that swirls around.”
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, who has been overseeing the evacuation of Australians from Sudan and regional tensions, was asked about the potential trademark clash on Sydney radio station 2GB.
“I have to say, I think like most Australians, I was pretty shocked to realise that Tassie Devils was not a name that we had the rights over,” Wong said. “I think most Australians would think that Tasmanian devils was something that we could use.”