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RNC To Sue CafePress For Helping People Promote Republican Candidates
from the seriously? dept
Apparently, a few years back, the Republican National Committee trademarked its elephant logo, along with "GOP", "Grand Old Party", and "Republican National Committee." And, here we are in an election year, and they're out trying to enforce those trademarks... against people who are trying to support the GOP and its candidates. Paul Alan Levy, from Public Citizen, who is representing CafePress in this case, writes in to let us know that the RNC has threatened to sue CafePress because some users of CafePress have created shirts that include the RNC elephant and the term GOP. You could almost (almost) understand this, if the shirts were negative. But, no, most of them were actually created by people who are Republicans or support Republican candidates. There's also the question of why its threatening CafePress, rather than the individuals who actually used the logo and the term. But, still, in an election year when the candidates seem to be shoving each other aside to try to embrace the online community and its ethic of "user generated content" perhaps someone should let the RNC know that suing the folks enabling your supporters to promote your candidates might not be the smartest move.
