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Best Buy Hands Out Cease & Desist Letters for Christmas

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the no-press-like-bad-press dept.

arrenlex writes "Improv Everywhere, a NY-based comedy group, was served a Cease & Desist notice by Best Buy for selling 'improv everywhere' shirts modeled after the blue Best Buy uniform. But that's not the interesting part. From the blog post: 'Here's where the story gets interesting. Today, Best Buy sent a C&D to our friend Scott Beale over at laughingsquid.com threatening legal action unless he removes the blog post referencing our shirts! They're threatening to sue someone for just covering the news story of the shirts!'"

3 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Are they going to go after the T.V. Show "Chuck" ? by tmroyster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Buy More is such a rip of Best Buy.

  2. back story by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.improveverywhere.com/2006/04/23/best-buy/

    so they went to the chelsea best buy, hundreds of them, in blue shirts, and pretended to be assistants throughout the store, perhaps more helpful than actual staff in some cases

    customers were amused and bemused, management went apeshit, the best part is the the black chick who goes "it's like that movie, 'the thomas crown affair'"!

    but seriously: this is all a case of people with too much time on their hands: the best buy "actors" in the original "event", AND the lawyers suing them

    and isn't there some sort of legal protection for comedy, jokes, mockery? the law that protects political cartoons for example. would they have a case with that? obviously IANAL, as i can't even remember the legal term for this sort of "mockery" that is protected

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  3. Re:Fuck Them by Spazmania · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As the operator of whitehouse.net, I'm intimately familiar with parody and fair use.

    The video and pcictures of their prank? Wonderful. Easily defended as parody. The special edition set with included best-buy shirt? Yeah, that probably gets a pass. Call it gray-zone. The shirt as a standalone, context optional? Sorry, that's pretty obvious infringement.

    Not that I'd call Best Buy's lawyers smart given the Streisand Effect, but legally I'd have to side with Best Buy's position.

    --
    Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.