REMEMBRANCE DAY POPPIES PNG TV

It’s a bit tenuous, mind you, although there is definitely an intellectual property angle as to who gets to produce and sell poppies. So, since Remembrance Day is upon us, I feel compelled to explore whether there is a copyright angle to the wearing of poppies. That was like poking a hornet’s nest!), or a rather bare-bones effort on copyright and death, or last week’s posting on copyright infringement as a form of hybrid warfare. I confess that I am fascinated by the nooks and crannies of copyright, such as the blog posting I wrote on “Copyright and Your Carbon Footprint”, or the blog on whether copyright is gender neutral (I argued that it was. What I love about writing this copyright blog is that one can always find a new twist. That leads us into the main point of this blog, the intellectual property (IP) controversies that have arisen around the sale of the poppies. In Britain an organization known as the “Poppy Factory”, which still exists today, was set up to manufacture the paper poppies for sale for the support of veterans causes.

Between 19 the poppy was adopted by veterans organizations in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It was an American teacher, Moina Michael, who campaigned to make the poppy the international symbol for remembrance of Allied war veterans, and to use their sale for veteran’s welfare. The poppies were made famous by the poem “In Flanders Fields” written by Canadian military doctor John McCrae in 1915 after seeing poppies on the battlefield after the loss of his friend in the second battle of Ypres. Poppies grew prolifically in the killing fields of Flanders in Belgium, and still cover the countryside today. It is probably fairly well known (although with today’s young people it is probably wrong to make assumptions) that the wearing of the poppy is a memorial to the sacrifices made by those who fought and died, initially in WW1 for the Allied cause. (When I was in Sydney last November 11, I spotted just one red poppy, an admittedly unscientific although first-hand survey). In the US, although they are not so ubiquitous as north of the border or in Britain, they are more typically worn on Memorial Day, which is in May, and in Australia and New Zealand I am told that poppies generally blossom around Anzac Day, April 25.

REMEMBRANCE DAY POPPIES PNG TV

They spring up on the lapels of TV news broadcasters, politicians, and members of the public like mushrooms in autumn. Today, in particular in Canada and the UK, Remembrance Day is marked by the wearing of poppies. And for that reason, I am posting this blog on November 11. Thus Armistice Day, now known as Remembrance Day in many countries including Canada, the UK and Australia, and Veteran’s Day in the US, was born. Germany didn’t formally surrender although it soon collapsed and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles treated it as a defeated country (with the results twenty years later that we all know about). At the 11 th hour of the 11 th day of the 11 th month in 1918, the guns on the western front in Europe fell silent.

Remembrance day poppies png