to bring to your attention something that the always-insightful, ever-clever Girl from Auntie found: this group of T-shirts being sold on CafePress by the folks litigating with Debbie Stoller over who owns the name Stitch'N'Bitch.
You may recall that there is a lawsuit pending in which a New York sewing store claims that it owns the trademark, while Debbie Stoller says "nuh-uh." A lot of knitters who attend groups that called themselves SnB were ticked off when Yahoo made them remove that portion of their group's name at the sewing store's demand.
Do you think the women's names on these T-shirts are a huge, odds-defying coincidence? (I.e., There is "Debbie" and of course we all know Debbie Stoller, "Jenna" which also happens to be the first name of the Girl from Auntie who has blogged about this vigorously, "Vicky" and there just so happens to be Vicky Howell who blogged about irritating she found the sewing store's attempts ....)
And once again, if you were the lawyer(s) representing the sewing store, wouldn't you tell your clients to knock it off? I sure would on the theory that this is only going to infuriate a large segment of the crafting community (thus adversely affecting their target market, because isn't this really about selling shit to crafters?) while possibly throwing a large wrench into any settlement negotiations.
But hey, what do I know?
Thanks to The Girl from Auntie for tipping me off to this via her blog.
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11 comments:
That is truly funny...I can't believe how non-shrewd people can be about their businesses.
Now, if they were Disney, and made tons of money by selling their trademarked characters and such, I could understand the legal fight. My bet is that the sewing store's lawyers are trying to keep the fight going and their fees at the same time.
Sheesh.
Thing is, I find it hard to believe that there's any sort of serious attempt to settle this. Given the period of time that's elapsed, it seems like they're just pinging each other every so often to say "give up yet? no? okay, extension of time", which doesn't cost either side very much at all, until they're both forced to commit some real funds to the dispute.
In the meantime, one trademark remains registered (although it seems that somebody there is determined to drive their goodwill into the red -- they have t-shirt patterns and classes, yet they're advocating buying readymade?), and the other isn't, while the family of products associated with the latter keeps growing and growing.
Gawd, sometimes people really suck. I saw that too on Jenna's site and just could not believe the gall.
They should be a little more concerned about public opinion. Who would ever want to do business with these slimy snakes?
It doesn't bother me that they think they have copyright and want to try to enforce it against folks like book publishers. I don't think they are right, but that's for the courts to sort out.
What bothers me is that they are such bullies about it. Going after little non-commercial SnB groups who are not cutting into their profits, these t-shirts and other things that are just mean spirited.
Oh Christ on a cracker. I caught the Debbie one but didn't even ponder over the Jenna and Vicky ones! How juvenile.
You know what I think is the best? The one shirt that says "Craftsters love ..." Yeah, craftster is a registered trademark owned by Leah Kramer, the founder/owner of craftster.org. I know for a fact that she had no idea they were using the term.
At least the shirts are tacky as hell, so it's unlikely they're selling many. I hope anyway.
"brenda" is the leader of the chicago SnB and the founder of the SnB leaders group, of which I am a member.
sweet jeebers, will these SFSE bastard turdhole assweasels (tip o the hat to rabbitch) EVER give up and admit THEY are WRONG?
pisses me off...
PS - my word is "cngodwye", god wye indeed...
I find it offensive that they are trying to claim copyright on a phrase that's been in the vernacular for years, many many years, which is part of the folk tradition of knitting. What's next: someone trying to trademark the purl stitch? Feh.
The idiotic thing about this, is that they're just alienating a segment of their population who might be part of their target market! I know jack squat about business, but even I know, "don't tick off your potential customers with stupid stunts."
I do have to say it would be kind of sweet, in the poetic-justice sense, if the woman who copyrighted "Craftster" went after them for unauthorized use of the name...
I just shake my head over the sheer IMMATURITY of the whole thing.
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