I'm just curious are these things legal? I think we have all seen the Montel Williams coins http://www.rightwingnews.com/graphics/obamacoins.jpg but now I see these suckers http://www.newstoday.co.za/cgi-bin/newstoday/show.pl?1232640538 and am wondering if they do not have Obama's permissions, how are they making legal cash on this? Why can I not just print a bunch of freaking Jordan and Yao coins?
Legal in what sense? The first coins are apparently just stickers that are placed on top of quarters. The second set are "medallions" and not pretending to be legal tender...
legal in the sense of why are they not shut down? If you can do this freely why is Nike paying Jordan millions when they could just put his name on their sneakers for free.
im not that knowledgable about IP but for one because the white house/bho hasn't challenged them. secondly a president is a bit different than an athlete. there may be legit fair use arguments that you can use potus's image, in a way that you can't use a private persons.
I did not read the article closely, but does it state that they do not have his permision? Can he be making money off of this? I don't know legal issues if a President can have marketing deals or anything like that. Sounds kinda crazy to even think about that.
