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Pro Bono Lawyer Fights C&D With Humor
Zordak writes "When Jake Freivald received a questionable Cease and Desist letter from a big-firm attorney, demanding that he immediately relinquish rights to his website http://westorage.info, his pro-bono lawyer decided to treat the letter like the joke that it was. In a three-page missive, the lawyer points out the legal, constitutional, and ethical problems with the letter that led him to conclude that the letter was a joke. He concludes, in a postscript, with an unsubstantiated demand for $28,000 in overpaid property taxes, and offers to lease the city the domain name 'westorange.gov' in exchange."
I would have used
"I refer you to the reply in arkell vs. pressdram"
A tip of the hat to Mr. Kapplitt responding to government overreach with a sense of humor. This is fine example of why lawyers work pro bono publico. I'd love to see this case go to trial so that future first amendment cases can cite Mr. Kaplitt's letter. Intel has a long history of using geographic names as project names because you can't copyright a geographic name. I worked on 'Year 2000 Compliance" at Intel. I thought I was working on Y2K compliance until the legal department sent out a notice that someone had asserted a copyright to Y2K. I once ran a BBS called "The Stack Exchange" which focused on HyperCard. I receive a nasty call from someone who wrote HyperCard applications for a company called the "The Stack Exchange." I changed the name of my BBS to avoid a legal hassle. If the caller hadn't been such an asshole I would have gone out of my way to explain the name change and to promote The Stack Exchange on my renamed BBS. The moral of the story is that it pays to ask nicely before sending out the cease and desist letter. Jack Daniel's took this approach when a book cover had the look of a Jack Daniel's label. Jack Daniel's even offered to cover the costs of designing a new cover for the book.