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Geek Squad Sends Cease-and-Desist Letter To God Squad
An anonymous reader writes "A Wisconsin priest has God on his car but Best Buy's lawyers on his back. Father Luke Strand at the Holy Family Parish in Fond Du Lac says he has received a cease-and-desist letter from the electronics retailer. From the article: 'At issue is Strand's black Volkswagen Beetle with door stickers bearing the name "God Squad" in a logo similar to that of Best Buy's Geek Squad, a group of electronics troubleshooters. Strand told the Fond du Lac Reporter that the car is a creative way to spur discussion and bring his faith to others. Best Buy Co. tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it appreciates what Strand is trying to do, but it's bad precedent to let groups violate its trademarks.'"
I don't know which "squad" is more f____g annoying.............
Best Buy lawyer struck by lightning.
I know that legally companies have to enforce trademarks or risk losing them. However, for a case like this where there is no actual damage to their business and no real risk of confusion, the best solution from a PR perspective would be to offer a royalty-free license to the trademark and its variant to the person in question.
You know, instead of the traditional "cease-and-desist" letter, you could send a "we notice you borrowed from our logo - we are required to contact you by trademark law, and we will offer you a royalty-free license for this use, in a limited context, if you get in touch with us".
That would completely avoid the nasty press these companies for doing this, and keep the trademark lawyers happily occupied.
Why can't we live in the kind of more civil society where we look for positive solutions to problems in this way instead of simply defaulting to the negative?
Nah, doesn't apply because it's not ironic, and it's not targeted at the Geek Squad.
If you did a car that looked like the geek squad car, with a logo that was the same except it said, "Week Squad" and ran around fixing peoples computers with a sledgehammer, and filming it...THAT would be parody.
Or in this case, if these people ran around praying over peoples computers and did it specifically to make fun of the Geek Squad, that would be legit.
Having the same logo on a legitimate enterprise isn't protected by parody/freedom of expression laws.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The Geek Squad colors are reversed. Orange up top black on bottom.
Does that mean that Geek Squad is Satanic?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The problem is that Best Buy needs to send him a Cease and Desist when they become aware of possible infringement or they waive their rights to assert the trademarks in other cases. It's not that they want to be dicks to that particular guy, it's that if they let him get away with it, they lose their right to assert trademark infringement in future cases. The Icons and VW Bug thing are close enough that no reasonable person would say it's not derivative of Geek Squad's logos, so if they let him get away with it they have to let everyone get away with it. There is significant legal precedent that non-asserted trademarks are not valid trademarks. It's much safer for them to just send this guy a C&D than to have a different, real trademark infringement case a year down the road where the defense claims that Geek Squad was aware of other trademark violations that they took no action to end those violations, therefore their trademark claim should be thrown out.