Weak a** decision making, shitgibbons, and Trademark law ™…
This week in ‘doNt SaY ThAT’ history! A Blast from the Past!
Thanks to the lovely TechDirt people I have now learned that not only has somebody come up with the term “shitgibbon” but they’ve also applied it to Donald Trump!!!
After some discussion Jay and MetalOllie teamed up to put the image on t-shirts at CafePress. I have no idea if anyone was actually buying it, but earlier today Lender announced that CafePress had shut down the page for trademark infringement. Whose trademark? Frito-Lay’s, the makers of Cheetos, of course!
It’s not at all clear if Frito-Lay made this request or if it’s just CafePress worrying about future Frito-Lay concerns. Lender asked CafePress for clarification, and all they sent back was a link to Frito Lay’s corporate contact page, telling him to contact Frito Lay to ask for authorization, implying that Cafe Press made this decision on its own. But, really, there appears to be a ton of other merchandise hosted at CafePress that mentions Cheetos in some form or another, so if the company is suddenly concerned about trademark threats from Frito-Lay, it seems to be targeting rather selectively.
Ummmmm….. okay… so…
Lender pushed back on CafePress’s decision to take down the store, and received some rather ridiculous “suggestions” for replacement terms:
Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160627/12155734834/cafepress-takes-down-t-shirt-calling-donald-trump-cheeto-faced-shitgibbon-saying-it-violates-frito-lays-trademark.shtml
So here’s another case of the opaque and ridiculous nature of trademark law at work! I’m not sure the original writers of trademark law had the censorship of political speech (which is constitutionally protected) in mind when they put pen to paper.
Now to be clear, that is not about the literal interpretation of trademark law. This is CafePress proactively preventing somebody from using a trademarked name regardless of its usage.
Now that is silly no matter how you look at it. I am pretty sure it is not CafePress’ job to be the trademark and copyright police of the world and I’m pretty sure all Americans have an absolute right to call any politician they like a cheeto face shitgibbon.
This has been another episode of ‘doNt SaY ThAT’!
A Serious Aside
I think Gibbons are underrated animals and you should read about them…
Gibbons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbon