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Please DO NOT SHARE this “Bernie is My Comrade” graphic

Please DO NOT SHARE this “Bernie is My Comrade” graphic

Nasty lawyer letter claims trademark infringement. Can you say Streisandski Effect?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiH54n80pbMAhVIHD4KHZo-BYcQjhwIBQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Flibertymaniacs.com%2Fproducts%2Fbernie-sanders-is-my-comrade-tees&bvm=bv.119745492,d.cWw&psig=AFQjCNGWfymlU5ZVX23DJsM9J9b7G9hx8A&ust=1461016008237887

If you want to know why Democrat leaders and party officials are scared to deathski about Bernie Sanders at the top of the ticket in November, take a look at the Featured Image, the graphic on a T-Shirt sold by Liberty Maniacs.

Bernie is doing well in head-to-head polling against Republicans because Republicans, including yours truly, have laid low in going after Bernie. Hillary, meanwhile, is too afraid of the progressive base of the Democrat Party to lower the hammer-and-sickle on Bernie’s head through negative advertising.

Buzzfeed reports that Team Bernie is not happy with the T-Shirt and related merchandise:

An online merchant has accused the Bernie Sanders campaign of “trademark bullying” after a Bernie 2016, Inc. attorney sent him a cease and desist letter regarding T-shirts, mugs, and sweatshirts depicting the candidate with historic communist leaders.

Claire Hawkins, a lawyer with Garvey, Schubert, Barer — which said it is “the official organization” of the campaign — sent the letter to Daniel McCall, demanding his company, Liberty Maniacs, stop selling the items.

The products show Sanders next Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, and others with the tagline, “Bernie is my comrade.”

“I was surprised Bernie’s campaign would have done that,” McCall, who designed the image, told BuzzFeed News….

Trademark infringement? Okay, I don’t claim to be an “expert” in the field, but wouldn’t that mean Bernie is claiming proprietary rights in his image being next to Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Engels and Marx?

Buzzfeed continues:

Paul Levy, McCall’s lawyer, responded to Hawkins, accusing the Sanders campaign of “trademark bullying.”

In his letter, Levy wrote to Hawkins: “It is your contention, apparently, that an ordinary and reasonably prudent consumer would tend to be confused about whether it is the Sanders campaign that is promoting Sanders’ candidacy by associated him with the 19th Century theoreticians of the communist movement as well as with three ruthless Communist Party dictators.”

Levy called the contention “absurd,” adding that the Sanders campaign “cannot use trademark theories to silence members of the American public who disagree with your client’s views and oppose his candidacy.”

Levy wrote about the letters in a blog post for Public Citizen, an advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader. He wrote in the blog that that lead counsel for the Sanders campaign told him that Garvey, Schubert, Barer sent the demand letter without any consultation with the Sanders campaign.

So Team Bernie is denying involvement, but the lawyer who sent the threatening letter specifically said he was counsel to Team Bernie and acting on behalf of Team Bernie, as these excerpts show:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/SandersDemandLetter.pdf

******

http://www.citizen.org/documents/SandersDemandLetter.pdf

Wait, hold on.

So the lawyers also claimed that Bernie in the image might create confusion? As in people might mistake him for Marxist leaders who killed hundreds of millions of people collectively? (pun intended)

The Team Bernie lawyer letter really worked, just like it worked for Barbra Streisandski:

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters to suppress numbers, files, and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

I hope Bernie wins the Democrat nomination.

Oh boy, do I hope. It might be our only chance.

Bernie For Glorious Leader from Aleister on Vimeo.

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Comments

I just can’t yet decide which of them I like best. They are both so – – so ‘creative’.

This time we’ll do Socialism right.

    Anchovy in reply to BillyHW. | April 17, 2016 at 8:36 pm

    Of course they will do it right this time. This will not be at all like previous socialist/communist countries. Because we will have the right people in charge, things will be completely different.

    If you don’t believe me or your disagree you will get to spend a little time at the William A. Jacobson re-education/labor camp in Fargo producing toilet bowls while you learn more about the glory of the common working person and a bunch of new songs that express the love and devotion that your political leadership has for you.

    Matt_SE in reply to BillyHW. | April 17, 2016 at 11:52 pm

    Because the average leftist is so much smarter now than previous generations.

    David Jay in reply to BillyHW. | April 18, 2016 at 9:48 am

    The only problem with Socialism is that the right people have never been in charge. Really – this is the only cogent argument I have heard when Socialists are asked about the repeated failures of Socialism.

    David Jay in reply to BillyHW. | April 18, 2016 at 9:56 am

    I should add, in the not-quite-cogent category: If Stalin had just had computers!

So, the lawyers that serve as “legal counsel to Bernie 2016 Inc., the official organization of the campaign for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 US presidential campaign” fired up that stupid letter “without any consultation with the Sanders campaign.”

Right?
All right…

Are they fired as “legal counsel to Bernie 2016 Inc., the official organization of the campaign for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 US presidential campaign” ?
No … ?

I’m Ok with Comrade Bernsky getting the Communist-crat nomination… truth in Democrat Politics and all that.

If #CrookedHillary gets indicted… all the better.

Hey, that’s great stuff. I particularly like not having to ask if it’s available in red.

But seriously … no matter who is actually representing Comrade Bernie (and the confusion on that point doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the Sanders campaign’s notions about the efficiency of central planning), even a fellow traveler frozen in time can be right twice a day.

They seem to be bitching about the “Bernie” text with the wavy underline, which is indeed the emblem of the Bernie Revolution (complete down to the red … or white … or whatever zvyezda over the “i”). The counter-revolutionary police lineup pic probably isn’t the part of the image they’re grousing about.

I must say that Tovarich Bernie does look very doctrinaire in the company of such luminaries.

A collectivist is claiming to own something? How precious.

Can’t wait for Comrade Bernie to utter “workers of the world, revolt….all you can lose are your chains.” Haven’t had that spirit for 100 years. Gosh… a century of “progress” now on the doorsteps of the Winter Palace….er….White House.

Isn’t political speech covered under fair use doctrine?

Paul In Sweden | April 18, 2016 at 4:54 am

Born and raised in NYC, have property in VT, live in Sweden, surrounded by socialists and even communists but they call themselves Vänsterpartiet which is a joke in itself. Vänsterpartiet means ‘the left party’ crap on a cracker every party here is left, left left, left left left or further left ‘cept for the Sverigedemokraterna(SD) which are actually pretty darn left on social issues.

I am not feeling the Bern… Maybe it is that old Brooklyn-Queens rivalry still going. Shout out to anyone hanging under the Hellsgate down at AP.

Thanks… just posted the graphic to Facebook.

Belial Issimo | April 18, 2016 at 12:28 pm

The T-shirt seller is represented by Public Citizen. Good for them.

Regarding Marxism, Communism, Fascism, Maoism: Those who preach are mere students; those who do are certifiable Criminals, and no concentration camp is too bad for their life sentences. Hitlery and Bolshevik Boinie will look Fab. in orange.

I wonder how many of the snowflakes supporting Bernie even know who the other men in the picture are? And what they represent and what they caused.

Walker Evans | April 18, 2016 at 6:05 pm

Somebody needs to attend every single Bernie the Bolshevik rally carrying a sign with Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote:

“The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money!”

Wait a second.

From a “Trademark” standpoint, I can completely see what they’re getting at here. It’s not the IMAGE that’s the problem.

It’s the Lettering with the two “swooshes” underneath.

Now, that being said AMF, Inc v. Sleekcraft Boats, 599 F.2d 341 (C.A.9) 1979, is entirely applicable, and the only three of the eight factors that Sen. Sanders would be able to point to would be:

– Similarity of the mark (it’s identical);

– Evidence of Actual Confusion (Bernie is a Socialist, several of those individuals were “Communists” and I’m not sure Bernie’s supporters are smart enough to know the difference); and

– Defendant’s intent in selecting the mark (Defendant specifically chose the design of Sen. Sanders campaign exactly BECAUSE it makes for biting political commentary).

Make the lettering Block or Times New Roman or something else and the whole (already weak) argument goes away entirely.

Bonus points if instead of a star, they put a hammer and sickle over the “i.”

    OK, Mr. Down twinkles – would you like to refute my ANALYSIS of the trademark confusion claim, or just be snotty and give me a thumbs-down?

    I’m waiting for your ever so enlightened response.

Paul In Sweden | April 20, 2016 at 12:13 am

The real problem is that too many are willfully blind or have not lived long enough or do not have family that have been chased or persecuted by communists. Mathematics, Science and HISTORY seem to me to be ancillary activities in both our schools and in our societies. This is unfortunate but a seemingly inevitable pattern which is fostered by complacency. History keeps on repeating.