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Thursday, September 29, 2011

You Know Those Cheesehead Hats That People Like? They're 'Intellectual Property'

Go figure...  Someone comes up with a funny idea for a hat, and figures out how to make them out of cheap foam and starts a business.  Fast forward about 25 years and someone else decides to make a funny poster intended to link cheese to poor health by putting a 'cheesehead' hat on top of the Grim Reaper on a single billboard.  As you can imagine, the company that owns the patent for this cheese hat as well as the registered trademark for the word, Cheesehead, sees this as a threat to their intellectual property.  Do they care about peoples' health?  That isn't the issue.  The issue is their product, and since they have threatened to sue the pro-health activists for their billboard.  The activists have backed down, apparently not wanted to get sued.  This is what is wrong with America - corporations can sue people and nonprofits for disparaging their brand.  Thus, we have 'free speech' but really it is not free speech at all.  We have the freedom to say what we like, but we do not have the freedom to disparage what we don't (or if you do, make sure you don't offend anyone).

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/chris_rickert/article_8e0ba0dc-ea1c-11e0-a10f-001cc4c03286.html

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