From: andersa@Riga.DoCS.UU.SE (Anders Andersson)
Newsgroups: rec.heraldry
Subject: Legal use of arms (was: Concepts of family and state heraldry)
Date: 13 Sep 1992 02:20:19 GMT
Organization: Uppsala University, Sweden
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: riga.docs.uu.se

In article <1992Sep11.182930.9687@watson.ibm.com>, mittle@watson.ibm.com (Josh Mittleman) writes:
> (*) armigerous (adj) entitled to bear and display armorial insignia.

...and if you live in a country which has no legislation regarding
the use of personal armorial insignia, does that mean that you are
entitled by birth to use it, or that you aren't entitled as there
is nobody around to entitle you, so you can simply use it anyway? ;-)

In Sweden, at least nobody is prohibited from displaying their own
armorial insignia.  It's considered inappropriate (maybe it can be
construed as a case of wilful deception) to display somebody else's
coat of arms, and you are not allowed to impersonate an official
authority or the very government by displaying either the grand or
the small state coat of arms in a representational manner (i.e. you
may of course paint or print it, and distribute copies of your
rendering of it, but you may not display it on for instance the
doors of your car), unless you have been given explicit permission
to do so.

One interesting use of the royal crest that seems contrary to good
practice, is its appearance on various commercial products.  This
can only be done with the approval of some official entity, I don't
know which one, in close cooperation with the royal court, I suppose,
but means that the manufacturer can display the royal crest on his
product, together with a text reading "Supplier to the Royal Court of
<country>", "By Appointment to H.M. the King", or something to that
effect.  I know this practice exists in Scandinavia and in Britain,
and maybe in other countries as well?  Similar marketing styles in
republics like the USA is of less interest, as they hardly have any
regulations at all about the display of foreign royal arms (neither
have we, I think, but it seems we aren't flooded by products "By
Appointment to the Queen of England, India & America" anyway).

However, can a product in the USA be sold with the label "Supplier
to the White House" or "By Appointment to the President of the USA"?
Can you display the official Eagle with arrows, spray and stars on
your front porch without getting angry looks from the police..?

A somewhat unorthodox variant of this is that the pan-Scandinavian
commercial satellite TV channel "TV3" seems to have obtained such a
license to advertise themselves as "Supplier of TV programs to the
Swedish Royal Court" in one of its talk shows (Aschberg's), and they
always proudly show the Swedish grand state coat of arms (which is
identical to the royal crest) on a big sign in the studio!

Anyway, thank you for the book list!  Those titles maybe aren't that
easily available here, as our libraries have a preference for the
language of the natives, but they do bring foreign titles either in
original, if it's considered important enough, or in translation, if
it exists.
--
Anders Andersson, Dept. of Computer Systems, Uppsala University
Paper Mail: Box 325, S-751 05 UPPSALA, Sweden
Phone: +46 18 183170   EMail: andersa@DoCS.UU.SE
Newsgroups: rec.heraldry