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Jack Daniels Shows How To Write a Cease and Desist Letter
NormalVisual writes "When the Jack Daniels distillery recently became aware of a book whose cover they felt substantially infringed their trademark, they didn't go into instant 'Terminator mode' — instead, they wrote a very thoughtful, civil letter to the infringing party, and even offered to help defray the costs of coming into compliance. I believe plenty of other companies (and many in the tech world) could use this as an example of how *not* to alienate people and come off looking like a bunch of greedy jerks."
That's classy.
Why can't more companies act this way towards one another?
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
Their lawyers must be drunk or something...
I intend to go out and buy a bottle of fine Jack Daniels bourbon after work today.
Why can't more companies act this way towards one another?
Sociopaths
With a tip of the hat, a please and thank you --A Southerner
They're Gentlemen... not in the define-which-is-the-guys-bathroom way, but in the fine-upstanding-wellmannered-educated way.
Kudos!
Think the next bottle of whiskey I buy for making whiskey burgers will be a bottle of Jacks.
JD's gets free publicity, and strengthens the brand by setting a nice example and by turning Wensik's book's first edition into a collector for its own whiskey fans, while the author enjoys greater exposition for his book, and sells out the first edition as a collector item. The general public loses nothing, some of us can even enjoy an unexpected collectible.
This really is the nicer way to handle brand infringement.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I recall something similar occurring to ilovejackdaniels.com which was a language cheat sheet site, which is now addedbytes.com: http://www.addedbytes.com/blog/what-happened-to-ilovejackdaniels-dot-com
They wrote it while testing their own product.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Please tell me the author had as much decency as Jack Daniels and did the right thing by responding with a simple statement along the lines of
"done".
Except JD isn't using its size to bully around the author... so no, not this time. Whether or not JD won doesn't much matter (especially since the author made out too).
I find that a little hard to believe.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
we simply request that you change the cover design when the book is re-printed
They go on to offer to help pay for the change if he does it sooner than the reprint/on the digital version.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
$faith_in_humanity++;
The Jack Daniel's company's gracious reaction to the abuse of their trade mark is more than the book's publisher deserved. Deliberately ripping-off another company's IPR for a book jacket is not the behaviour of a reputable publisher.
My experience, however, is that book-publishers are meticulous to the point of obsession about ensuring they have all the necessary rights for the cover artwork in place before going to press. This does make me wonder whether this incident is actually a publicity stunt...
I don't see anything about size. If you didn't know anything about Jack Daniels how would you be able to say they are a huge brand just from the letter?
What about other JD merchandise? I could see someone thinking it was an official JD book.
There's fightin' whiskey and there's lovin' whiskey...
"The author is the "fan of the brand", but the writer of the letter implies that he is the fan."
It's implied.
'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.'
Charles Caleb Colton
Perhaps this could be called parody. Lots of times people take a famous logo and tweak it for a joke or comment. eg the Coke logo that says "Cocaine".
Generally that's called fair use.
That usage happens quite often. For an expensive law firm, though, it seems like a stupid error.
Usages that happen quite often are by definition not errors. Source: Every linguist of the last century.
case in point: the first thing I thought of when reading TFA, was the bloodthirsty license agreement which was written around 1985.
A couple of friends of mine formed band that used a very Jack Daniels-esque Logo for a while. When they became popular, they got a very similar letter from JD. They changed the logo - and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have if the letter had been more harshly-worded or even threatening, given how anti-establishment they are =)
Not being an asshole can bring you remarkably far when dealing with people.
Nah, I'm going to give them this one. The slam dunk is a book that's "40 % ALC. By VOL". It was obviously created to connect with the brand. The decorative lines (filigree?) around the edges is also identical. You don't get to trade on someone else's brand, and that's what the author is doing.
Especially since it's not in the same line (and scale) of business. Besides fair use, parodies (such as the cover if not the book itself) ought to be covered by freedom of expression laws.
Slurred speech quickly translates to slurred grammar when you're a corporate lawyer who consumes every free sample of your company's product.
Again, you also need to see my response to Hatta above.
This is a great article certainly worth having on the front page of Slashdot. However, the complete lack of editorial oversight is infuriating. The sole link in this article is to Mashable, which cites BoingBoing, which sites the webpage for the book. I simply clicked through those citation and found the primary source. Why didn't the Slashdot editor do this? To push traffic to Mashable? We should have the primary source as the primary reference. If the discussion on the other sites is worth it then those can be the focus of the article. Otherwise give the primary source!
OK, we've got to reward good corporate behavior.
I'm buying a quart of Jack for the commute to work.
Don't worry, I cut it with a splash of soda since I'm driving. Got to be responsible, you know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's Jack Daniel's. Put this one in the same league as "I'm going to loose my widget that i don't want to lose." The error is far to common to correct, but it's still painful.
It may well be the entire industry that acts that way. A couple of years ago I was at a tasting event with the either Grandson or Great Grandson of Jim Beam, and he was the same way. .
You're probably talking about Fred Noe III. Yep, he's a nice guy. As is Bill Samuels Jr. over at Maker's Mark. If you take a distillery tour here in Kentucky or attend a tasting at a Derby party or the Bourbon Festival, you might run into these guys. Or one of the many other storied distillers. To see Jack Daniels distillery, of course, you'll have to go to Tennessee. Even though the brand is now owned by a Kentucky company, (Brown-Forman) they are still most definitely a Tennessee whiskey.
For a little bit more about the whiskey business, check out this photo book at the author's website:
http://www.leonhowlett.com/kentuckybourbonexperience/
or at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Bourbon-Experience-Kentuckys-Distilleries/dp/1935001817
Or just go visit a distillery.
Disclaimer: I know the author, but don't receive any compensation for the book. I just think it's a beautiful book.
I only drink their product occasionally, and then only mixed with a coke, as I prefer Irish whiskey for sipping. But JD has always struck me as a classy company, so they are definitely doing something right. Good on 'em.
The initial posting by the author was much more along the lines of "Goodbye Beautiful Cover Art", and didn't include the whole letter with all the politeness, explaining why Jack Daniels was writing and their offer to help change the cover early, but just the top.
And actually, IANAL, but it is my understanding that you need to protect your trademarks. Jack Daniels does do books, they do merchandise, etc. So they need to play "protect their trademark". Since the cover was not a parody of Jack Daniels, parody is not a defense. Nor is fair use in this case.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Well, they are in the right. Not only that, but they are legally required to defend their mark of trade. Given that, this is a very reasonable and non-antagonistic way to handle things.
JD "wins" in this case in the same way that a neighbor whose window was broken "wins": they were the victim and deserve to be compensated. If, of course, the neighbor didn't break the window (which doesn't appear to be the case here), they can easily reply in a non-hyper-legal manner. This is "uh, your kid broke my window and knocked over my lamp. I'll take care of the window... tell you what, get a new lampshade, and we're even. If you have the kid apologize, I'll even cover the lampshade."
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
So, they could have bullied him anyway with a threat of litigation, so I guess kudos for that, but they were actually asking hi to do something he has no legal obligation to do.
This wasn't a major publisher, but a very small independent, Lazy Fascist Press, which is an imprint of Eraserhead Press.
Looking at their catalog, they really seem uninhibited by such notions as well, taste. That they greenlit the cover is not surprising.
Test your net with Netalyzr
JD sells more then booze. A lot more.
They sell books, too, among other things. The core business of JD is booze, but their brand is much bigger then that.
Some of it is just merchandise for the fans. Others are things like cookbooks who have licensed JD's trademark.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mashable.com/2012/07/22/jack-daniels-trademark-letter/
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
http://www.businessinsider.com/jack-daniels-wrote-what-has-to-be-the-nicest-cease-and-desist-order-of-all-time-2012-7
And as an ex-employee who was unceremoniously downsized, may I say how good it feels to get "Little Doobie" back out there where Google can find it. The self-righteous tards would like nothing better than to have that ugly little incident forgotten. ;-)
Please mod up and help my cause?
This is a novel. That's about the only thing Jack Daniel's doesn't have a trademark on. Christmas lights and ukuleles, but not novels. JD has no case here, and should not be sending C&D letters to authors, no matter how nicely worded.
According to the USPTO, JD's trademarks are for:
I thought they were a man's alcohol company. And they come out with loved-up hippy ecstasy-head stuff like this?
I'm imagining a whisky-drinking Hello Kitty character writing that letter.
Oh no, they won, for the cost of a very nicely worded legal document, they got a ton of free advertising, as did the author (I believe the first run of books is sold out already).
...
Little late, the first printing is sold out ;)
...
It's nice to see a company live up to one of it's brands, namely the nicer version called "Gentleman Jack"...
(though that doesn't taste as nice as a bottle of Silver Select)
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
Buy a bottle of Jack tonight.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
...tears into my eyes.
It makes me happy whenever I see companies operate in this manner - wish more would act this way, but I actually have experience with a larger company being nice.
As part of my job I file and keep up all the trademark filing for the company I work for, and we actually had a trademark dispute a few years ago, involving a name we were registering being a little too close to an already registered name. They are probably a billion dollar revenue company in size, while we are only a few million.
Despite being in two totally separate markets (but both involving technology products that can communicate with databases, etc.), their lawyer was very nice to me, and simply said they wouldn't pursue any actions against us as long as we dropped our current registration and simply filed a new one with our company name in front of it - so rather than "trademark", it became "companyname trademark". Not a big deal as we usually put our company name on our products any ways.
Their lawyer even helped me better define the wording on our product registration, to make absolutely sure there wouldn't be any overlap with theirs. Didn't cost my company a dime, other than my time and a $325 refiling fee. I was very happy with the outcome, considering they could have buried us in legal crap had they wanted to.
They won, but (and here's the important part) THE OTHER COMPANY DIDN'T LOSE.
Economics is not warfare. In battle, one side wins, the other loses (at least in the general case). Not so in business. It's entirely possible for both sides to win. It's possible for both sides to lose. It's possible for one side to win and the other to be pretty much unaffected - like, say, this time.
People thinking of business only as zero-sum are one of the biggest problems with modern capitalism.
The software equivalent to this case would be using Apple's trademark.... apple.... for a book-cover, with said book having nothing to do with Apple equipment, other than he used a Mac to help him with a piano.
In other words, there IS no software comparison (as software would be copyright, not trademark, infringement), and the closest you can come to an analogy is the exact same scenario with two different parties.
The author wanted to attribute some of his book's success to Jack Daniels, which they understood, and responded with an understanding and helpful letter explaining why this would not be appreciated, with an offer of help to make the requested changes. In other words, JD didn't see the author as a thief, but took a moment to understand the situation, and responded accordingly.
How the *fuck* can you misconstrue this into a bullying bad thing?
Between this and the lawyer that was behind theOatmeal vs FunnyJunk I'm getting this funny impression that lawyers outside silicon valley are actually pretty nice people.
I must be getting brainwashed. Where's my tinfoil hat?
If only more companies were like this...
Most other such letters i've seen are openly hostile and threatening and tend to assume that the person in question is being intentionally malicious when it may just be an honest mistake.
I host a number of forums, and every now and again we get a complaint that someone has posted something to the forum, wether its infringing a trademark, copyright or offensive to someone... If we get a nice email pointing this out i'm more than happy to remove it and usually do so quickly, but some of the hostile mails making all manner of threats and accusing us of all sorts or making wild assumptions just make me want to move the server hosting to china and tell them where to stick their nastygram.
Really, is it all that much effort to write a nice polite email? Do they really think they will be more successful by making threats?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
For example:
http://www.jamesonwhiskey.com/Our-Whiskeys/Jameson-Reserves/Jameson-18-Year-Old-Limited-Reserve.aspx/URL
http://brokenpianoforpresident.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/jd-letter-entire-big1.jpg
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
maybe they should understand the consumer can tell the different between a book and a bottle of whiskey. They are being friendly because they don't have a case.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's probably a list for "Jack Daniels", not the logo. Even if not - the logo doesn't have to be registered in any particular product segments in order to be protected. Your trademark is YOUR MARK. YOURS. Assigned to you. Nobody else. To indicate and brand your products. If someone else makes a product of any kind with a nearly identical logo, that's not allowed, because it causes confusion and leads people to believe the 3rd party product came from you. "JD has no case here, and should not be sending C&D letters to authors, no matter how nicely worded." No, the author's artist shouldn't have scanned (and then ever so slightly altered, by adding one or two flourishes) a company's logo for the cover of his book. The lifting of the log is extremely blatant - the result is predictable, and given the publisher's name and the author's assholeish "fuck the man!" response, I'd say they did it specifically for publicity.
Please help metamoderate.
It isn't obvious that this is a parody. It's a commercial enterprise targeted towards whiskey fans that adapts one of the most recognizable trademarks in the US whisky business. This is a bit different than a tee shirt manufacturer satirizing a Coca-cola trademark to promote an entirely different addictive substance.
But, really, the merits of the case are a secondary question. Many firms send out very nasty cease and desist letters making very strong claims even if they _know_ that they don't have a leg to stand on. This letter really stands out in that rather than taking an adversarial approach from the start, it seeks to cooperate in good faith from the outset. That is commendable.
My liquor cabinet requires some replenishment of Tennessee Whiskey.