ThinkGeek's Best Ever Cease-and-Desist Letter 264
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.
Acronym? (Score:5, Funny)
Lawyers are idjits... (Score:1, Funny)
*facepalm*
You are all missing the real issue here! (Score:5, Funny)
Stop the needless killing of endangered species!
Re:Good but... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, there's a shorter name for those.
Re:Good but... (Score:5, Funny)
i dunno, baconless bacon double cheeseburger doesnt look shorter to me.
New slogan? (Score:3, Funny)
Pork: Hardly anybody gets Trichinosis these days!
Pork: Now with Bacon!
Pork: You know you love to do it!
Pork: If you were a Christian, you could be eating it now!
Oh, c'mon! (Score:5, Funny)
Are you deliberately ignoring the fact that Slashdot's audience are rapid unicorn enthusiasts?
Finally,,, (Score:5, Funny)
my Nick is relevant to a Slashdot story.
ThinkGeek FTW!
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
How many people has the California Milk Processor Board sued for the literally hundreds of infringements of their "Got ____?" Trademark?
Dunno. Got Citation?
Re:You are all missing the real issue here! (Score:1, Funny)
But it's magically delicious!
Re:You are all missing the real issue here! (Score:4, Funny)
Unicorns are already extinct. I think the idea is that if we kill and eat enough of them we'll get an integer underflow glitch and we'll be back up to 2.1 billion unicorns in the world.
Re:Good but... (Score:5, Funny)
It's not got much spam in it...
Re:Oh, c'mon! (Score:1, Funny)
i have to admit, the unicorn enthusiasts here are inclined to be very quick, more so then your everyday rabid unicorn enthusiasts.
Re:This trademark has been mocked from day one (Score:2, Funny)
pretty sure people are red meat
Only if you're native American. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Re:Oh, c'mon! (Score:5, Funny)
Are you saying there are slow unicorn enthusiasts?
Re:You are all missing the real issue here! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes but if it's a 64bit int we might wind up with 8 quintillion of them - we'd be neck deep or something!
Re:Oh, c'mon! (Score:5, Funny)
Are you saying there are slow unicorn enthusiasts?
Only impaled ones.
Re:The Letter, Please... (Score:4, Funny)
I'ld like to read a transcript of the phone call where they told them unicords don't exist.
Re:New slogan? (Score:4, Funny)
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...
Re:Acronym? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought SPAM stood for Squirrels, Possum, and Muskrat... could be regional...
Re:Oh, c'mon! (Score:3, Funny)
As long as the unicorns are neither invisible nor pink that's fine.
All hail His Noodly Appendage!
ThinkGeek should have known better ... (Score:3, Funny)
... and that lawyers always get easily confused (like confusing the word "new" with the word "other"). Numerous surveys have been conducted and found that less than 2% of the public gets these two words confused, while 44% of those on drugs, and 73% of lawyers, will get these two words confused.
The moral of the story is that lawyers always get confused, so you have to always write all text in legalese.
Re:ThinkGeek should have known better ... (Score:4, Funny)
Close, but the true moral of the story is that you are herewith obligated, under statutes pertinent to your jurisdiction, to retain the services of a qualified legal professional, registered in your jurisdiction to prepare, submit, review, approve, publish and otherwise process all documents using terminology carefully worded to minimize any risk of exposure to further recrimination or liability. (at $85 per word or $1500 per hr charged in 6 minutes blocks, whichever is greater)
sign, here, here, and here and initial here
...and here
Re:The Letter, Please... (Score:4, Funny)
Son,
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Yours truly,
Flying Sky Daddy
other (Score:1, Funny)
My cock is the other white meat. And if you rub it it even makes its own gravy.
Re:Before having a knee-jerk anti-lawyer moment... (Score:3, Funny)
Contrary to some popular opinions, The Pork Board is not nearly as humorous entity as some are made to believe it is.
Re:Parodies of trademarks are not protected (Score:2, Funny)