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American Express threatens RHF over 13 year old joke

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Brad Templeton

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Apr 13, 2004, 11:36:34 PM4/13/04
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Full text of this with links can be found on my blog at:
http://ideas.4brad.com/archives/000064.html

Remember Mastercard's attempt to pull down a joke in 2001?
Today, we received a cease and desist letter from American
Express's lawyers over a 13 year old joke making fun of
their ad style.

The original joke:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q2/amexprew.html

Copy of the Cease and Desist Letter:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/leydig.html


Here is the letter I wrote back to the lawyers...

-------------------------------------------

You can "Screw More" with an American Express Lawyer

Do you know me?

I built a famous company with a famous name, and then satirists made
fun of me by taking advantage of the constitutional protections afforded
parody when it comes to trademark law?

That's why I retained Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd, the "American Express
Lawyers." Should you ever feel your reputation lost or stolen by free
speech and satire, just one call gets LVM to write a threatening cease and
desist letter -- usually on the same day -- citing all sorts of important
sounding laws but ignoring the realities of parody. Most innocent web
sites will cave in, not knowing their rights. LVM will pretend it
has never read cases like L.L. Bean, Inc. v. High Society and dozens
of others. There's no preset limit on the number of people you can
threaten, so you can bully as much as you wish.

After all, Being Giant and Intimidating has its Privileges.

American Express Lawyers: Don't leave your home page without them.


-------------------------------------------

See the Brad Ideas blog (ideas.4brad.com) for a few more details.
--
Selected by Jim Griffith. MAIL your joke to fu...@netfunny.com.
Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply.

Remember: Only ONE joke per submission. Extra jokes may be rejected.
For the full submission guidelines, see http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/

This joke's link: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/04/Apr/amex.html

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