I very much admire the work of dystopian authors – Huxley, Orwell, and more recently Mike Judge and Pixar. Be it through Soma, Big Brother, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, or Buy N Large, we’ve had a good run of authors reminding us that an obsession (or apathy) of our culture could easily spell destruction. Capitalism often is at the heart of it, and rightfully so.
But Michael Stipe may be wrong: it may not start with an earthquake, birds, snakes, or aeroplanes. It may very well come in the vanity of trademark law.
Wendy Seltzer was kind enough to bring this to the world’s attention via Twitter. The Republican National Committee has decided to file a lawsuit against user-generated merchandise guru CaféPress, defending the trademark they claim in both the “GOP” letter-set and the famous elephant-with-three-stars logo. You know, this one:
Advocacy group Public Citizen (who boldly supplied the image above) has come to the defense of CaféPress, both online and in court. They raise some excellent points, including the fact that (a) organizations have been using the elephant and “GOP” since 1857, well before they sought a formal registration of trademark in 1997 (TM Serial 74608550), that (b) uses such as these are so clearly protected by the First Amendment and by Trademark fair use provisions it becomes somewhat absurd, and (c) the fundamental issue of trademark infringement, the notion that this would create “confusion” around the identity of whose brand it was seems almost unimaginable. It’s not as if people were creating their own political party with the intent of confusing theirs with Republicans.
Perhaps most interesting and confusing about this is who was targeted by the RNC in the complaint. A PDF of the offending images can be found here. Of the 48 images shown, a whopping eight are anti-republican, with a possible ninth if you consider “Republicans for Obama” to be anti-Republican. Politically, who is this really serving? Why, in 2008, in a year when the Republican candidate for President is not doing so hot, would you want to squelch the grassroots support? Public Citizen puts it better.
PC:
Indeed, although some of the uses of the elephant and “GOP” are certainly critical of the GOP, the majority of the images over which the RNC has threatened to sue reflect positive opinions about Republicans. Several designs simply put the elephant logo on a t-shirt, so that the wearer can walk around bragging about his or her adherence to Republicanism. Others make highly favorable comments on Republicanism, such as a design portraying a larger elephant trailed by two smaller elephants and the words, “I’m raising my children right,” or a picture of an elephant and the initials GOP accompanied by “Don’t be an ass, Go Republican.” Several other designs place an elephant image next to the name of a Republican candidate. Shouldn’t the RNC want more of these images displayed? [Hyperlinks preserved from the original post]
Trademarks are in a different space than copyrights, as they have to constantly defend against their infringement or else face the dreaded trademark dilution, which got the Escalator and Zipper, may have stolen away Klenex, and is close to grabbing Band-Aid and Xerox. To some extent, one can see why the RNC feels compelled to defend against this, even if it is patently absurd. The other arguments have weaknesses, no doubt, and while the RNC could defend their actions to some degree, the question of whether they should seems answered to the contrary. The power of a party affiliation transcends normal trademarks. You cannot imagine confusion in the marketplace. This isn’t confusing Coke with a Coke-like substitute. This is confusing Republicans with another political party. It’s as if Massachusetts started calling itself Iowa, hoping no one would notice. The damage this does quieting the party on this, a crucial hour for those who hold with the Republican party, seems without reason.
I haven’t read Neal Stephensen’s Snow Crash yet; it’s sitting on my bureau next to a few others I plan to read through before law school takes over my reading. Something tells me, amidst the Pizza cartels, franchised governments, and anarcho-capitalism of Snow Crash could be the story of the political party that started suing people for referring to them. It fits in so nicely with the dystopian aesthetic.
