LEGAL STOUSH!
Brisbane City Council is facing legal action after brazenly using LNP Queensland intellectual property – a distinctive pattern of consecutive blue and yellow strips – to light up the Story Bridge recently.
LNP Queensland head office has issued a Supreme Court writ calling on the council to never repeat the action while urging the court to award substantial damages “for this egregious breach of our IP, our distinctive visual trademark, that has become synonymous with the party’s campaigning at municipal level”.
The LNP in Queensland has been using that distinctive pattern of alternating blue and yellow narrow rectangular strips down the side of their municipal poll election material since the days of Campbell “Can-Do” Newman’s time as Lord Mayor after 2004.
A party spokesperson told The Bug: “Not long after Mr Newman became Lord Mayor, the Brisbane City Council started using our design themselves, calling it their “cleat” whatever the fuck that means, if you’ll pardon the French.
“I remember Lord Mayor Newman was furious with the council administration over the matter and called on the council’s chief executive to cease the practice immediately, but the council chief assured the Lord Mayor the colours used and the dimensions of the rectangular strips were different from the LNP design and no reasonable person would think they were the same.
“In hindsight, it was probably a big mistake to let the issue die because the council now uses that “cleat” – our intellectual property – on all sorts of promotions and street signs, etc.”
Long-term city councillor Vicki Howard explained to The Bug why the latest council use of the party’s imagery was “a bridge too far”.
“I used the party’s design for my own campaign material before I was elected to council back in 2012,” the Central Ward councillor explained.
“In the years since, the council’s use of our distinctive IP has ballooned enormously and we took the view that imitation was the finest form of flattery. That was probably a big mistake on our part.
“But it’s one thing to use our distinctive pattern on street and park signs and transport timetables and brochures and the like.
“But to use it on such a large scale, on the city’s most iconic structure, blatantly telling the people of Brisbane that, somehow, the City Council, using our pattern of blue and yellow elongated rectangles and the city itself, as represented by the Story Bridge, are one and the same, is simply not on!”
“But worse than that, by using our IP that we only use for campaigning purposes, it makes it look like the LNP Queensland owns the Story Bridge – that somehow the two things fit naturally together; that both are inseparable – and I’d hate it if the good people of Brisbane thought that was the case,” Cr Howard said.
“I would be absolutely appalled – and Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner shares my view – if the good people of Brisbane were somehow hoodwinked into thinking that come election time!
“I don’t think I could live with myself if I was ever seen to be associated with such a tawdry, unethical, unprincipled and deceitful course of action!
“It would never, ever, be the way the LNP Queensland plays politics.”
Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!
The Bug Online 