U Of Alabama Wants To Have Its Cake And Sue You Too
from the trademark-insanity dept
We've talked a few times recently about the insanity created by over-aggressive intellectual property enforcement when it comes to universities, and the University of Alabama really is a prime example. After all, this is the school that sued a local artist for painting (very popular) commemorative paintings of UA football moments. Thankfully, it recently lost that case, but I guess the lawyers at Alabama didn't quite get the message that perhaps they shouldn't be so quick to dash off legal nastygrams. It appears that the lawyers in charge of enforcing UA's trademarks were quick to send off a legal nastygram to a local baker because she was making hand-decorated cakes and cookies with "UA-related" imagery:[Mary] Cesar is owner of Mary's Cakes & Pastries in downtown Northport. The bakery is known for its customized cakes, but it also sells fresh-baked pastries and iced and decorated form-cut cookies. During the last three to four years, its cookies, especially during the football season, have included hats with a houndstooth-like icing pattern, footballs and elephants with the letter “A.” Some customers also ordered cakes decorated with a Crimson Tide theme.Yeah, just one problem: she was doing that for the university itself.
Mary Cesar created a cake that resembled the BCS National Championship trophy for the Crimson Tide's athletic department for National Signing Day in February. And when the University of Alabama Law School held a reception for its recent graduates, it ordered 10 dozen cookies decorated with a capital “A” for Alabama from her bakery.Cesar announced that she couldn't afford to fight the legal nastygram, and was going to stop producing the popular baked goods. After the story got out, the University quickly went into damage-control mode and issued an apology, claiming that it was "not consistent with the protocol we normally follow for local vendors on trademark issues." Given the lawsuit mentioned above, it's not clear that's really accurate. Of course, part of the culprit here may be that UA outsourced its trademark enforcement to a third party. Collegiate Licensing Co., based in Atlanta, is who the letter actually came from. It would seem that if you're seeking to build up goodwill with local merchants who supply your own staff with university-themed baked goods, perhaps the first thing you should do is not let lawyers from some other state start nastygramming them.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: baked goods, trademark, university of alabama
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Systemic problem
This sounds more like a systemic problem with the way legal services and the "professionals" involved are acting all around the country/world. How many of the bogus legal threats are coming as a result of lawyers running out of control and threatening/suing anything they conceivably can instead of having someone looking over their shoulder asking if it really makes sense from a business/PR perspective?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Systemic problem
You listen to the stories and studies claiming billions of dollars are being stole from people who own IP, and you want your piece of the pie. Someone offers to do it for you and will send you checks, you sign on the dotted line and you know your safe... until you destroy your image.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Crimson Tide vs. Tsunami of Anger
http://www.caketalkblog.com/2012/09/how-it-ended.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Crimson Tide vs. Tsunami of Anger
Picture the looks on the lawyers faces not knowing which side to sit on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Crimson Tide vs. Tsunami of Anger
Yes. Everybody loves a David vs. Goliath story. However, David with his sling versus "Nuke him from orbit."? Good luck to David.
It's good that the priests of the local football religion figured out that creating martyrs might just NOT be the best idea anybody's ever had.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Crimson Tide vs. Tsunami of Anger
I was not suggesting she engage in a giant legal battle, but force the Universities lawyers to have to sit on both sides of the court room fighting each other.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
A perfect example is the Toomer's Corner tree poisoning incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auburn_Tigers#Toomer.27s_Trees_poisoned. Anyone who decides to poison 130+ year old trees and potentially groundwater also over a stupid college sports rivalry is definitely taking this shit too seriously.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Did you even read the article? Said stupid people are the University. The University told the baker to use their logos for products for the University. It then sued her for complying with its demands.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What does this have to with the University Of Alabama?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Great business model
Maybe next year they will find that merchants will not even sell university approved merchandise.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]