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ThinkGeek's Best Ever Cease-and-Desist Letter
ThinkGeek, sister company to Slashdot, received a meticulously researched (except on one point) 12-page cease-and-desist letter from the National Pork Board. What had the meat lobbyists up in arms was an April Fools product from the TG catalog: Radiant Farms Canned Unicorn Meat, whose copy included the line "the new white meat." The NPB figured this was confusingly similar to their trademarked "the other white meat" (an advertising slogan the pork industry is considering retiring anyway). Geeknet, parent company of Thinkgeek and Slashdot, issued a press release apologizing for any confusion; you can read it on ThinkGeek's site (PDF), because the newswires refused to distribute it for some reason. Oh, and ThinkGeek has no intention of taking down the protected parody.
SPAM is a contraction of SPiced hAM; what is the acronym for Canned Unicorn Meat? Have they considered changing the slogan to "Enjoy some tasty CUM today!"?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
...consider that organizations can lose their trademarks if they don't actively defend them against even vague and doubtful potential infringements. If they let this case slip without issuing a token C&D, it could be cited later by an actual competitor as grounds for permitting their own infringement.
That's not to say that the law isn't stupid, but the proper target for complaints about the stupidity of the law is your local congresscritter, not the lawyers who are just dealing with the laws as they are. These lawyers are just writing letters, not trolling for DUI cases on the sides of city buses.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Would you have known about the $10 off any $40 order if it wasn't on the front page? ;)
Article reading FTW!
Unicorn meat is murder!
Stop the needless killing of endangered species!
I'm an IP lawyer (IAAIPL) and putting aside the fact that this is completely ridiculous, the most obvious legal problem the NPB is going to face is that I don't think ThinkGeek was using the slogan as a trademark (which is a prerequisite for trademark infringement), given that they weren't selling an actual product. Although to be fair, I'm not sure the sale of an imaginary product under trademark law has been considered by a court before...
i dunno, baconless bacon double cheeseburger doesnt look shorter to me.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Are you deliberately ignoring the fact that Slashdot's audience are rapid unicorn enthusiasts?
my Nick is relevant to a Slashdot story.
ThinkGeek FTW!
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Companies get their panties in a bunch. We laugh at them. Film at 11.
It's actually an interesting insight into the bureaucratic mindset of the average idiot.
Pork Boss: Smith! Get over here now! There is some company using a slogan on some food that's really similar to ours!
Smith: Uhhh, boss, I don't think that Unicorn meat really exis...
Pork Boss: What? Smith! NOW! Get our lawyers on the horn! This can't go ahead!
Smith: Uhhhh, right on it boss.
*ringing phone*
Pork Lawyer: WHAT? Oh my, I will draft a letter IMMEDIATELY, this can't go on, who owns Unicorn Meat anyhow? Do they have a strong lobby group?
Smith: Uhhhh, again, I don't think that it's really real, I mean it's unicorn mea...
Pork Lawyer: Nonsense! This is outrageous. I will have them by the balls on this one. The letter will be out in the afternoon mail run! *click* Suzie, send a bill to the Pork Board for a cease and desist. Slap on a few extra hours work too will ya darling? Cheers!
All that can now be heard is the soft sad crying of Common Sense in the corner.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
How many people has the California Milk Processor Board sued for the literally hundreds of infringements of their "Got ____?" Trademark?
Dunno. Got Citation?
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
It's not got much spam in it...
Actually, in Saskatchewan the Pork Producers came up with This slogan:
"Pork. The one you love!"
Unfortunately, they forgot the period on the signs they marketed all over the province...
If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.
That sequence *is* actually common sense, but for everyone independently: the lawyer wants billable work, the manager wants to get ahead by impressing their higher-ups, and Smith isn't really getting paid enough to object strongly.
Extrapolate to millions of people and you get Corporate America.
It doesn't matter how much you pay an employee...if it's a public company or institution, the employee won't speak up. The only tangible benefit to speaking up is it saves the company legal fees. But those savings do not pass to the individual employee. What does pass to the individual employee who tries to avoid legal action (i.e. risk mitigation) is that if the risk comes to fruition, that person is humiliated for having decided to take the risk. So the employee has to weigh a potential benefit to the company against the risk of his own personal humiliation.
Unless he's an owner and the legal fees are coming out of his own pocket, he'll [almost always] avoid any possibility of personal humiliation, and instead, allow (or even favor) the company taking legal action, no matter how much he gets paid. (CEOs and other high-paid execs of public companies are often the worst offenders, being most concerned about their personal images.)
You just can't beat the economics of spending other people's money.