Chick-fil-A is suing some guy for making T-shirts that say: “Eat More Kale” on them. (Their slogan is “Eat Mor Chikin”, or something like that.) Apparently from their ads, the company is run by cows, so I guess they don’t know that you can’t own two words of a three word phrase so that nobody else is ever allowed to use that sentence for any purpose ever again. If it’s something that libels them or something, like if the shirt said: “Eat More Pussy”, and then had a logo that looked like Chick-fil-A’s logo, but said instead: “Chicks-U-Lay”*, then I could see them suing someone over that, but to sue someone over a T-shirt that says: “Eat More Kale”? That’s what’s known as: “Lawsuit Abuse”. And that’s how big companies with deep pockets and high-priced lawyers bully small competitors and others they perceive as invading their proprietary idea/market space, and it should be struck down by any court in the land.
But as we all know from real-life civics courses like watching the news, big corporations donate to political parties, and judges belong to political parties, and they will generally favor their judgment to the big-moneyed corporate donor in this type of case. Not so, you say? Check the record on this stuff: the big-moneyed corporate interests win almost all the time, mostly because they’re permitted to abuse the system. And they only can abuse the system if they’re allowed to abuse the system: the laws are pretty clear on this type of thing, but corporate interests are allowed to bully the little guy all the time anyway, even though it’s not supposed to work this way. The only way to stop it is to boycott bully companies that do this crap, since our “justice” system almost always manages to fail us in this type of arena. Sickening, but true.
The truth is, especially for something so benign as the “Eat More Kale” example, anytime anyone makes fun of a brand, or a logo, or an ad, that makes everyone think of the original company or product that’s being referenced, so it’s really a form of free advertising! It’s really almost like a guerilla marketing campaign for the corporate brand. And then, when that company sues that little guy, that’s an example of a PR disaster! Once big companies start to look like they’re pushing average people around, especially in this type of economy: Whoops! They really ought to know better by now, but I suppose that like members of congress, corporate lawyers probably feel a need to justify their existence as a paid position, and so they try to figure out ways to stay active and relevant, like finding excuses to sue everybody, etc. (Congresspeople always find it necessary to pass new laws, without looking at older laws to see if there are redundancies, to the point where we are now, where we’re literally drowning in complex legislation nobody understands, and the Justice Dept. honestly cannot even accurately tell us the number of felony laws on the books: not the laws themselves, but just even how many there are!† So we have a situation now where people can actually literally be breaking the law and committing a felony, and not only do they not know they’re doing it, but the Justice Dept. isn’t even sure, either. Now that’s progress for ya’! But I digress…)
And actually, the fact is that Chick-fil-A’s slogan: “Eat Mor Chikin” is misspelled, and as such, anyone should be able to use: “Eat More Chicken” and argue in court that it’s different enough, since it’s grammatically correct, and Chick-fil-A is contaminating our culture with misspellings. I’m surprised some schoolteacher hasn’t done that yet just to call attention to it, given the lower learning standards we’ve got in our failing schools these days! It’s like the Toys-R-Us logo with the backwards “R”: I’ve grown used to it, but when I was a teenager, it used to make me mad; I used to say: “Oh, isn’t it cute: our children are illiterate!” And that was back when our schools were pretty good!
* Sorry for the adult imagery, but I was trying to present an example of what might constitute actually actionable trademark infringement that could reasonably be claimed to be damaging to the brand. And actually, this example might, and probably ought to, be protected expression under the “parody” ruling, even if it was sold as a T-shirt. But then again, there’s that money and politics issue, and we all know how that usually works out…
† Don’t believe me? Check this out:
This isn’t even the article I’m referring to. I can’t find that at the moment, but it said they literally didn’t even know how many laws were on the books anymore, and that most people could be breaking the law all the time and not even know it! Ridiculous!
And here’s this silly suit story:
