How Not to Write a Cease-and-Desist Letter

In our overly litigious society it seems that many companies are all too happy to fire off a cease-and-desist letter if they see something they don't like. Many times these letters end up online just causing further embarrassment for the company. One such company has decided to try scaring their targets out of this response by including a copyright notice for their cease-and-desist letter. Public Citizen has fielded one of these dumb letters and has invited them to try to assert their cease-and-desist copyright (which isn't even registered).

Comments

Last I checked...

[Neitokun]

You don't need to "Register" a copyright. The very act of creating something copyrights it.

hmm, not copyrighted?

[Skadet]

FTFPDF

Moreover [. . . ] the copyright in the letter has not been registered.

IIRC, copyright doesn't need to be registered. Demonstrable evidence that that person who claims ownership/copyright is sufficient (see: poor man's copyright -- not the best example, but the line of thinking I'm going with)

Aside from that, save the arguments for the judge, imo. Corporate attorneys don't care about your "logic" and "laws", they're slaves to the suits above them just like any other corporate worker (*gasp* there are suits ABOVE lawyers?!?!?!)

copyrights don't need to be registered...

[tjstork]

jeesh! how can a bunch of OSS GPL people not know that copyrights do not need to be registered under the Berne Convention.... RMS is laughing at us!

Re:Copyright registration

[Chess_the_cat]

The problem here is that it's impossible to show that you didn't mail yourself an empty envelope only to fill it days, weeks, months, or years later with content. The "federal datestamp" only shows when the envelope was mailed; not when it was filled.