The Danish royal house and state do not appreciate or tolerate their symbol, the royal crown, being used by anyone other than themselves.
According to the state archives, Rigsarkivet, 54 companies have been warned off using the royal crown without authority since 2011. Some 49 of them immediately changed their crowns, four were reported to the police and one case ended up in court.
“The closed crown is the symbol of the royal house and state, so companies, restaurants and anyone else cannot use it,” Ronny Andersen, a heraldry consultant at Rigsarkivet, told Metroxpress newspaper.
“We can’t have others suddenly looking like the royal house and state.”
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42 years later …
Normally, Andersen said, the companies in question are contacted and informed about how they can change their crown to a more legally acceptable crown.
Among the companies to have ‘crown issues’, were TV2, who used a crown in one of their programmes, the band D.A.D and the brewery Unibrew.
But also smaller businesses have been warned, including Hong Kong Grill in Valby, a web designer, a souvenir shop, a beauty salon and a local bar, Husar Pub, which had a crown over its door for 42 years before the complaints started trickling in.
Joachim B Olsen, a spokesperson for Liberal Alliance, told Metroxpress he thought the issue was close to being taken too far as the crown was a rather universal symbol.
