Trademark Protection

[MichaelB]

Seems pork producers are serious about protecting their trademark.

Thinkgeek launched an April foos day product offering – Unicorn meat. ThinkGeek :: Canned Unicorn Meat They copied a phrase directly from a pork meat promotion. They recently received a ceaase and desist letter from the National Pork Board (no, not the US Senate).

Recently we got the best-ever cease and desist letter. We're no stranger to the genre, so what could possibly make this one stand out from the rest?

First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds.

But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it's for a fake product we launched for April Fool's day.

It wasn't the iCade, or the Dharma Initiative Clock, or even the Tribbles 'n' Bits Breakfast Cereal.

No, it was the Canned Unicorn Meat.

The very special but also very real letter is from the National Pork Board, who claims we're infringing on the slogan "The Other White Meat," a slogan they're apparently thinking about phasing out anyways.

We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork--and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist. From our press release [PDF or text]:

"It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," said Scott Kauffman, President and CEO of Geeknet. "In fact, ThinkGeek's canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red, and not approved by any government entity."

ThinkGeek :: Blurgh! The ThinkGeek Blog - Officially our best-ever cease and desist

I originally though about posting this in the joke forum, but it's not a joke. Still, pork producers can sleep more easily now...