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ThinkGeek, http://www.thinkgeek.com, is an Internet-order company for, well, geeks. ThinkGeek carries... interesting(?) products for geeks: lightsabers, titanium sporks, no end of bacon products (they seem to think that bacon is cool), and The Big Bang Theory t-shirts (Bazinga!). At the beginning of April, they introduced a new product: Canned unicorn meat. The ad said "Pâté is passé. Unicorn - the new white meat." (http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/unicorn-meat.shtml).



Unicorn. "The new white meat," huh? Sounds like someone else's slogan, doesn't it--"The Other White Meat"?



Can you guess what happened? ThinkGeek received a cease and desist letter from lawyers from the National Pork Board (even though the Board is thinking of retiring the slogan). As ThinkGeek wrote of the letter, "First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds." (The letter was from Faegre & Benson, a well-known and -respected international firm.)



See that "on one point" parenthetical in the ThinkGeek post? Faegre & Benson missed out on one thing: This alleged infringement of the National Pork Board's trademark is (probably) protected by fair use... as parody.



Remember when the product was introduced? Early April. April 1st, in fact. The new product was an April Fool's joke. As ThinkGeek's webpage for the new "product" said, "Not yet approved by the USDA or FDA, but the nuns have eaten it for centuries and they're healthy as horses."



Moral of the story: Think before you draft documents or bill clients.

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