From: schuldy@progress.COM (Mark Schuldenfrei)
Subject: Re: Period Heraldic Practice
Organization: Progress Software Corp.
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 17:01:21 GMT

Pagan asked:
  And while we're talking about such things, what *did* happen with the
  Trimarian Order of the Black Widow?

I've got opinions, but they aren't what you asked for...

From the Board Minutes of the October 1992 meeting:

  VI. NEW BUSINESS

  VI.A Trimarian Order of the Black Widow.

  Lisa Winters (Tanarian Breenaur ferch Owain fab Bran) wrote the Board of
  Directors protesting a "ban" on the Order of the Black Widow, an award
  for fighting women in the Kingdom of Trimaris.  Laurel had refused to
  register the name and device of the Order on the grounds thta the SCA
  had long ago ruled that it could not deny a _class_ of people from combat
  or other participation, and that it was therefore inappropriate to
  establish a combat-related order barring males as a class.  The Board
  chose to regard this letter as an out-of-channels protest to Laurel's
  decision, pointing out that the Order itself has not been banned, Laurel
  has simply refused to register it.  She will be advised to appeal
  Laurel's decision if she chooses through normal channels.  George will
  write.


In Laurel's October 1992 letter, he discussed the name in both the cover
letter, and in the rejection section.

October 92 Letter of Acceptance and Return:
Cover Letter:
  Comics culture conflicts
   
  Some of the conflict calls this month (e.g. Order of the Black Widows,
  Order of the Opus) were against fictional characters in our popular
  culture -- specifically, comic strip characters.  I dislike having to
  call conflict against such ephemeral characters; on the other hand, if
  someone submitted the name Clark Kent, I'd almost certainly return it
  for conflict.  On what basis, then, should we judge such conflicts?
  
  There are two categories in the List of Protected Items (Administrative
  Guidelines, pp.2-3) that would cover such conflict calls:  Category D,
  Famous Characters in Literature, and Category H, Trademarked Items.
  Most comic book characters' names are copyrighted these days, as a matter
  of course, and many are trademarked as well: Marvel and DC are said to
  be particularly trademark-happy.  Our problem lies in the fact that most
  superhero names are of exactly the same nature as many SCA Order and
  household names:  an epithet or descriptive, taken as a personal noun.
  Storm, Valor, Swordsman, Ice, Guardian, Phoenix are typical superhero
  names -- and some of them, as you see, are direct conflicts with
  registered SCA names.  (Heck, Marvel even managed to copyright Meggan,
  a common given name!)
  
  If I understand rightly, the purpose of trademarks is to keep
  competitors in a field from manipulating or benefitting from one
  another's reputations.  Trademarks don't infringe when the intended
  use of the products is so different as to make the chance of confusion
  negligible.  Thus the Excel (the car from Hyundai) doesn't infringe on
  Excel (the software from Microsoft).  The Apple Music Company had no
  objection to Apple Computers using their name - - until the latter
  started manufacturing music-making Macs.
  
  If that's the case, then we only need to worry about infringing on
  copyrights or trademarks when the intended use of the SCA-registered
  item is too close to the use of the trademarked item.  In practice, I
  suppose this means fighting groups can't call themselves the West
  Kingdom Avengers or the Justice League of Atlantia -- but I don't see
  that the Shire of the Storm really infringes on the superheroine Storm.
  
  That leaves protection as Famous Literary Characters, and this is more
  subjective.  I don't want to get into a debate as to whether comics are
  Literature-with-a-capital-L; it's the fame of the characters, not the
  quality of their scripting, that concerns us.  Infringement requires the
  character's name to be well-known; unknown names, by definition, won't
  be recognized as comic book characters.  (The issue is related, in a
  way, to that of intrusive modernity:  if people recognize a name as a
  comic strip character, they automatically know it's not medieval.)  Most
  people haven't heard of most comic book characters; and even well-known
  superhero names (Captain America, Wonder Woman, Batman, Spiderman) are
  usually returnable for non-period style as well.
  
  There are thus few comic characters that need to be protected:  the
  aforementioned Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, possibly Mary Worth, Bart
  Simpson, Charlie Brown, perhaps a handful of others.  Those conflicts
  are, unfortunately, valid -- but they will, in all cases, depend on
  whether the character's name has seeped into the public consciousness.
  We can't depend on finding these items in general references, our usual
  standard for importance. I'll try to be as objective as I can, but
  it'll still boil down in most cases to polling Yeomen on the Road to
  see who's heard of the name.
  
Rejections:
Trimaris, Kingdom of.  Name resubmission for the Order of Black Widows.
     The name had been previously returned for conflict with Widow's
   Abbey; for use of the name of an animal not known to period Europeans;
   and because the College did not wish to appear to endorse an Order
   that discriminated by gender.  The first and third of these issues
   have been addressed, by permission in one case, by revising the
   charter of the Order in the other.  However, the second issue remains: 
   the phrase black widow has not been demonstrated to be period, either
   as the name of a spider or anything else.
     In conversation, Lord Lymphad has informed me that the phrase was
   used in period to refer to rapacious women, and that it was given to
   the spider as an allusion to that usage.  He hasn't supported this
   assertion with documentation, however; and my own efforts at
   documenting the phrase turned up empty.  (The closest I came were
   some late-period adages to the effect of "Beware of the woman
   thrice-widowed."  It's much the same sentiment, but not helpful in
   this case.)
     While I concede that the words black and widow are period words,
   the phrase black widow is a modern construction.  As with the
   Artemisian Tank Corps (returned Feb 91), though the parts of the name
   may be period, the name as a whole is decidedly modern.  In previous
   appeals, the submitters have made clear that the Order's name
   specifically referred to the black widow spider; and that's certainly
   how the name will be perceived.  No evidence has yet been produced
   that the spider was known to medieval Europeans, or even to anyone
   prior to the 19th Century.  (It didn't even get the name black widow
   until the early 20th Century.) Without such evidence, we will not
   register the creature, by name or in armory.
     With regard to the possible conflict with the Marvel comic book
   character the Black Widow, I believe such character names should only
   be protected if the name is likely to be known outside the ranks of
   comic book aficionados.  Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, for
   instance, are well-known enough to be protected; the Black Widow is
   not.  (She's a background character in the Marvel universe; she
   doesn't even rate her own book.)  See the cover letter for a further
   discussion of this issue.
--
Mark Schuldenfrei (schuldy@progress.com)
[I'm just showin' you my opinions: this ain't a gift]