Brand Protection
Can I create a page or group using Big Cat Rescue’s cats, logo, brand?
The short answer is no.
Here’s why:
We from time to time get requests like this by people with very good intentions who sincerely want to help. The problem is that this has negative effects that are understandably not obvious to those making the request.
Our cats depends on our brand to represent the highest standards in animal care, integrity and respect to others. We police that very strictly on all of our interactions with the public. You will notice that we don’t allow cursing, bullying or bad behavior on our sites. That takes a lot of work because we have a broad social presence across many platforms and
have over 2 million people interacting with us. Our social channels are meant to be a safe place for people to learn the truth about the issues so they will become better advocates for the cats.
Frequently someone will contact us and ask if we have seen some site online that is posting our photos or videos. Almost all of the time, it is just one of our other social sites that we manage. But when we find someone else is posing as us, we ask them to take it down. If they do not, we have to file take down requests with the provider (like Facebook) under the Digital Media Copyright Act based on the copyright we own to our logo and the trademark we own on our name.
Even if the people who want to set up a separate site invite us to be admins, we have all we can do to monitor our own online pages. We cannot monitor dozens of others. If people post inappropriate or inaccurate information on a site that is branded with our logo and/or name, two things happen. First, it damages our brand, hurting our efforts on behalf of the cats. Second, people who view these sites then email us asking if we are associated with those pages or if we agree with something that was said. We then have to divert valuable time and resources that should be used to benefit the cats to respond to these inquiries.
Having separate pages for each of our cats, or friends groups, or any other spin offs of our brand, also diminishes our ability to rally the troops whenever there is a situation where all of their combined voices could have an impact. We have had tremendous success in convincing venues not to allow abusive big cat displays on their premises and in influencing regulations and legislation. Through our sites we can reach all of our supporters with these calls to action.
While, as mentioned above, the inquires we receive to set up other sites are usually made with very good intentions, for all of the reasons above they not only are not helpful, but they end up having a negative impact on our brand and our ability to care for the cats and end the trade.
We appreciate the good intentions but also appreciate your understanding why we cannot permit our copyrighted logo and trademarked name to be used on sites we do not set up ourselves.
