IP Freely

Dear Mr. Sofio,

I am the publisher and editor-in-chief of the website Jewschool.com, as well as the proprietor of a Cafepress.com shop called “The Jewschool Sto’” which was, until recently, selling an item that your client, TeenageMillionaire.com, deemed to be in violation of their intellectual property rights. The item in question was specifically a t-shirt which parodied TeenageMillionaire’s “Jesus Is My Homeboy” shirt, by adding the traditional Jewish garb of a yarmulke (skullcap) and payot (sidelocks) to their Jesus caricature, and altering the text to say, “Jesus was a kike.”

Despite your client’s contention that the work is infringing upon their copyright, my work indeed qualifies as a legitimate parody (even in consideration of its derivative nature) and under the precedent of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (510 U.S. 569) falls under the protection of fair use statutes.

In that your client’s claim is clearly without merit, I humbly request that you rescind your notice to Cafepress to halt the sale of the item in question, and allow me to go about conducting my business without further interference.

Thank you,

Daniel Sieradski
Jewschool.com

cc: Norine Moy, Cafepress.com

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Dear Mr. Sieradski:

My client, Teenage Millionaire holds a copyright and a trademark in the “Jesus Is My Homeboy” design. Parody is not a defense to trademark infringement.

There is no fair use in trademark infringement. As such you are unfairly capitalizing on my client’s established brand, and your request to withdraw our notice to CafePress is hereby denied.

We therefore demand that you immediately:

(1) cease manufacturing, advertising and selling all unauthorized merchandise embodying the infringing artwork and provide us with a letter of assurance that all infringing activities have been stopped and will not be resumed or repeated at any time in the future;

(2) provide us with a full accounting of the total gross proceeds of the sale of such merchandise, so that we may ascertain the damages incurred; and

(3) provide us with a detailed statement of the remaining inventory of such merchandise in the your possession or under your control and turn over to us such remaining inventory.

Please be advised that if you do not cooperate with the above demands, my clients are prepared to proceed with legal action to enforce their rights.

Nothing in this email should be construed as a waiver of any rights and remedies of Teenage Millionaire, all of which are expressly reserved.

Best regards,
Joseph M. Sofio

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Dear Mr. Sofio,

Parody actually does constitute a defense in the case of trademark infringement so long as there is no possibility that customers will presume that the original trademark owner is connected with or approving of the parody. In this particular case it is clear that a “wholesome Christian company” would not by any means approve of nor be in any way connected with such a product. In other words, it defies sense to presume that the same company responsible for “Jesus Is My Homeboy” would create a t-shirt reading “Jesus was a kike.”

If your claim is dillution of trademark, which seems to be the only grounds from which you can approach the matter, the parodied design intends in no way to tarnish the reputation of Teenage Millionaire and I find it highly unlikely that you can demonstrate dillution as such. The shirt was conceived shortly after the release of The Passion Of The Christ and is offered as social commentary on the nature of antisemitism and the irony inherent within the historical persecution of Jewish people on the part of Christian people who obviously have lost sight of the fact that Jesus himself was a Jewish person. Ie., a Christian person who might refer to a Jewish person as a “kike” is oblivious to the fact that Jesus himself was also a “kike.” I do not see how making this point harms the reputation of Teenage Millionaire and it is doubtful that a court will either.

I’d also like to add that I find the concept of trademarking and copyrighting a religious icon to be incredibly distasteful and, frankly, unethical. If Jesus had an estate to represent his interests, your client would likely have never been able to copyright or trademark his likeness to begin with.

Thus, I will not comply with your demands, because I believe they are without merit, and would like to note, in addition, that you will have a rather hard time serving me with papers as I am currently residing in Israel and do not intend to return to the United States for some time, if ever. On top of that, I have been unemployed for nearly a year, with no savings to speak of, so good luck seeking damages. You should also take under consideration that the t-shirts are manufactured by a print-on-demand service and therefore there is a) no inventory, b) I earn roughly $3 per shirt (whereas Cafepress takes the vast majority of earnings for their part in manufacturing and distribution), and c) I haven’t sold more than a dozen of them. If you’re really intent on taking me to court for $36, be my guest. It’s probable that you will lose the case, but if by some miracle of God you don’t, you ain’t gonna get nothin’ outta me anyway except to further impoverish the impoverished which, I must say, would be an incredibly un-Christian action on your client’s part.

In such a scenario I can only wonder really, what would Jesus do?

I think he’d let it go.

Thanks for your prompt reply,

Daniel Sieradski
Jewschool.com

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[Update] Thanks, everyone, for your support in this matter. Here is my latest e-mail to Teenage Millionaire’s lawyer:

Dear Mr. Sofio,

I believe I should bring to attention the following few facts in hopes of compelling you further to rescind your notice to Cafepress to halt production on my t-shirts.

First of all, your client is clearly infringing upon the trademark of Land-O-Lakes Butter. Notice the “halo” and the placement of the hands? I may have to inform them of this fact if you resist cooperation.

Secondly, there are two relatively recent high profile court cases which justify my position, both of which are examples of commercial parody, in which the plaintiffs — the trademark holders — lost: Fox News Corp. vs. Al Franken and Tommy Hilfiger vs. Nature Labs.

Thirdly, your client may have trademarked the phrase “Jesus is my homeboy” — but that in no way is grounds to claim infringement on anyone else’s use of “is my homeboy,” as you did in the case of the Cafepress shop “Free Will” and their “Arnold is my homeboy” shirt. Jesus may exclusively be your client’s homeboy, but your client can not de facto claim that everyone else is too. If that is your claim, then you also have an obligation to pursue litigation against all of these people as well, else you will be found to be in abandonment of your trademark:

http://www.zazzle.com/products/product/product.asp?product_id=235077348006669147
http://shoten.free.fr/index.php?2004/09/26/7-tee-shirt-fabrice-is-my-homeboy
http://www.shirts-t-shirts.com/design/label/38/kerry-is-my-homeboy-pot-t-shirt/
http://www.phatpimpclothing.com/hi/phatpimp/getsatanismyhomeboy.html
http://www.jinx.com/scripts/details.asp?affid=-1&productID=307
http://www.emerchandise.com/product/TSBLE0012/s.zRIyfPti
http://www.wickedcoolstuff.com/sttrmrspmyho.html
http://www.loveinwar.com/store.cfm
http://buddhaismyhomeboy.com/
http://www.heebmagazine.com/store/storepop.php?id=8&tp=13

The pursuit of your client’s claim is startin’ to look expensive, ain’t it?

In that, I would also like your client to familiarize himself with the argument against copyrighting popular phrases, such as “so and so is my homeboy,” in hopes that he may realize what a disservice it does to creativity and humanity.

Fourthly, I did not use the phrase “is my homeboy” on my shirts. Thus while “Jesus is my homeboy” may be your client’s trademark, I question whether the actual image of Jesus which I utilize on my shirt is. If that image is merely copyrighted, your trademark infringement claim is moot.

Finally, are you familiar with the concept of genericide? As demonstrated by the number of individuals utilizing the phrase “is my homeboy” on the merchandise listed above, your client’s trademark stands in extraordinary danger of losing its exclusive status.

In other words, you don’t have a case, and your claims are frivolous. So if you would please, inform Cafepress that you rescind your notice.

By the way, I hope you like negative press. Your little IP witchhunt will do more to tarnish the reputation of Teenage Millionaire than any parody ever will.

Best regards,

Daniel Sieradski
Jewschool.com

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[Update] Here.