New Brazilian slogan 'Brazil, visit and love us' challenged for copyright infringement

Brazillian’s Tourism Institut (Instituto Brasileiro do Turismo – Embratur for short) has launched a slogan that is intended to be used abroad in order to foment Brazil as a tourism destination: 'Brazil, visit and love us'.

The slogan has been criticized for different reasons, for example, displaying a sexual overtone relating to the use of the pronoun 'us' instead of 'it'. Former Embratur's President noted that 'Brazil has been struggling to erase the image of being a sex tourism destination'; and this is also supported by the view of Mr. Lopes, President of the hotel association of Rio de Janeiro, who noted that '"us" needs to be taken out. "It's bad for us'.

From the IP arena, the slogan has been challenged for being a copyright infringement. A few days after announcing the trademark, Benoit Sjöholm, a French artist, has claimed that the font used infringes his copyright. The font is called Fontastique and can be freely downloaded (here for instance) but only for personal use. For commercial use, however, his previous authorization is required – which Embratur has not done.

After the slogan's short appearance, it is already back to the office for an adjustment. Embratur has announced that it will adapt the trademark in order to no longer use Mr. Sjöholm’s font. Instead, it will look for a free font on the Web (hopefully, commercial purposes allowed). One keeps the hope that, by changing the font, Embratur will also change the pronoun 'us' to avoid the lost in translation issue.

Post was written by Eloísa Deola Borges, Brazilian attorney
Lecturer (external) at Humboldt University, Berlin
Eloisa also works on the development of publications in Open Access at QUCOSA.