Wembley frowns on Texperts “lightcasting”
As the erstwhile lawyer here at Texperts Towers, I’m not usually embroiled in that much controversy or legal wrangling – but this week that all changed. You may recall that last week Giles and Sarah were scooting around London looking for big buildings to “lightcast” our re-launched logo on. At the time, I must admit that my legal “spider-sense” was tingling ever so slightly, especially when they said that the MI6 building was their first target – shining lasers at the security services seemed a little over the top to me.
But as it turns out, that was the least of our worries. One of the big buildings that the team found was Wembley Stadium – and this week we got a very formal letter from the lawyers for Wembley National Stadium Limited. They are clearly rather cross.
They say that we will give members of the public the erroneous impression that we have been authorised as a sponsor of, or that we are endorsed by, Wembley Stadium, and that our use of the building was clearly designed to take maximum benefit of the goodwill and reputation of the Stadium. Oh dear.
So we have given a very formal undertaking not to use any pictures of Wembley Stadium or its arch (did you know that the arch is registered as a trade mark? I kid you not!). We will never issue any advertising or promotional material that will give rise to an erroneous association in the mind of the public between Texperts and Wembley. They asked for £500 for writing us the letter – and we have offered to pay this amount to charity.
So let’s be clear – the photo has gone from our website and we have no association with Wembley Stadium – they do not endorse us (and in fact, we don’t think that they like us very much). In future we will look for other large buildings if the urge to shine bright lights all over London town strikes us again. If you have a spare large building, do let Giles know. But in the mean-time, we will still answer football questions and keep you posted on any developments.
Here are some Wembley-related questions we’ve recently received. Enjoy!
Q. How much did it cost to build the old Wembley?
A. The old Wembley Stadium took 300 days to build at a cost of £750,000. Wembley was built in 1923 as a national stadium with a capacity of 125,000.
Q. How much did the new Wembley stadium over-run in cost?
A. The official overall cost of Wembley Stadium was £757m. It is alleged that it ran an additional £352m over budget, for a total of £1.109 billion.
Q. When was the last time England won a competitive match at Wembley?
A. England last won a competitive match at Wembley on the 4th of October 1999, beating Luxembourg 6-0. They last won a friendly on 31st May 2000, 2-0 vs Ukraine.
Q. Who scored the first goal at the New Wembley?
A. The first goal at New Wembley was scored by Mark Bright (BBC pundit, formerly of Sheffield Wednesday and Crystal Palace) in a charity match on 17 March 2007. He scored for Geoff Thomas’ Charity Foundation XI.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Pah! What a bunch of miserable doom-mongers!
Perhaps the Stadium of Light would have been more fitting - a trip to Sunderland, Texperts?
Well done with the amazing publicity! You guys are EVERYWHERE!
September 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I think we are receiving a similar threat. We have altered the front page of our web site in the hope they do not sue us. I had always thought that the owner of the film in a camera was the holder of the copyright. It seems that I cannot now take a photograph from my carpark showing the local area because someone has built an arch in the way.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
http://www.wembleycarpark.co.uk What offence have we caused or committed please?