Several readers have asked for our thoughts regarding the news that the Cincinnati Bengals threatened to sue a fan-run blog for copyright infringement.

If we’re being honest (and we always are, except when we’re not), the phrase “better them than us” was the first thought that came to mind.

Then again, what happened in this case wasn’t arbitrary.  StripeHype.com got sufficiently close to the line to trigger a cease-and-desist letter, apparently by using images and logos that infringed on the team’s copyrights.  And though we’ll defer to the experts in copyright law who’ll hopefully post their views on the matter below (without charging us), it’s our understanding that if a company that owns a copyright is aware that someone is infringing on the protection and fails to act, the copyright could be jeopardized.

So the challenge for any media company (web site, newspaper, magazine, or otherwise) is to acknowledge and respect the legal protections belonging to other persons or companies.  Though some of our ads contain NFL logos and other copyrighted materials that the companies like Sprint and Bank of America (and, you know, the NFL itself) have a license to use, we never have — and never will — incorporate into the design of the site images or logos that would potentially encroach upon the rights of the NFL or any of its member clubs.

This is hardly a new phenomenon.  We can’t find a link to it, but we clearly recall the Bengals pulling the same routine with a similar web site several years ago, back in the days when web sites were simply called “web sites” and not “blogs.”  And for those of you (like me) who are old enough to remember the Topps football cards of the early 1970s, the logos on the sides of the players’ helmets weren’t obscured with what looked to be a felt-tip pen that had been left in a sauna without a cap for the aesthetics.  Topps didn’t have an NFL license, and thus Topps couldn’t put the NFL logos on its products.

(UPDATE:  Here’s the link to the story about the Bengals’ assault against the site known as mikebrownsucks.com.)

While it’s easy to pick on the Bengals (and fun, too), they actually are doing the smart thing by ensuring that its rights to the logos and images are protected.  Though they might have gone about it differently (perhaps by explaining nicely to the folks at StripeHype.com that the rights needed to be asserted in order to prevent the rights from being jeopardized), we tend to think that the move itself reflects prudent business judgment.

Then again, we also think the Bengals’ logos and uniforms are hideous, so maybe they’d be better off to lose the copyright protection and start from scratch with something else.