Penny Arcade vs. American Greetings Revisited

Jojo writes "After American Greetings got some lawyers to bring down a Penny Arcade strip (M i r r o r) last week, PA is now striking back.. IANAL, but I fear their latest strip might get them into real trouble this time." As always, PA cracks me up, but these are scary events. The banned strip is clearly a work of parody, which I believe is still legal in this country, unless that too changed recently.

Comments

Re:Clearly Parody, But....

[John_Booty]

This is an example of where you bite the bullet, pay for the lawyer, and proceed to file a counter suit for personal damages, ie, the cost fo hiring a lawyer to defend yourself from a baseless lawsuit. You get your money back, and then some. But most people will just back down, Am Greets is counting on it. Hope the PA guys get some backbone.

Just a few problems here...

1. Even if they successfully defend themselves against AmGreet, I don't see how they'd get much compensation for damages... legal costs aside, how much money have they lost here?
2. You... do have a passing familiarity with the American legal system, right? You know how lawyers cost a LOT of money, and trials take a LONG TIME and get appealed a lot? And you know how you don't get paid until the end, even if you win? I don't know that the PA guys have tens of thousands of dollars sitting around that they don't need for the next couple of years, when the court stuff would be finished and they'd possibly get paid.
3. If PA somehow lost, they might be totally bankrupt. So they have to weigh the very small potential gain agsint the very large potential losses they'd face.

Truthfully, when it comes to having "backbone", probably the most effective way to get back at AmGreet is to make them look stupid and maybe encourage a boycott and letter-writing campaign. PA has thousands of readers; I don't know that a PA-reader boycott of AG would really make a dent in their bottom line (in face I'm sure it wouldn't) but if they see it's costing them money and letters start pouring in, perhaps AmGreet will back down.