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…The Lactivist is being threatened with a lawsuit.
Why? Because I was selling a shirt that said “the other white milk.”
First, a little background if you’re new to the site. The Lactivist is a blog about breastfeeding and human milk banking. It’s mostly a gathering place for breastfeeding moms to come and share their thoughts and experiences and to keep up to date on the latest issues in the fight for the rights of a child to eat in public. To help fund the site (and to raise money for the non-profit milk banks) I have a CafePress store that sells t-shirts with funny pro-breastfeeding slogans. Things like “Milk on Tap” and “That’s my baby’s lunch you’re staring at.”
Thus…the shirt that read “the other white milk.”
I received a letter this morning from Jennifer Daniel Collins, an attorney at Faegre & Benson that represents The National Pork Board. It stated, for the most part, that my use of the phrase “the other white milk” violates their trademark on the phrase “the other white meat.” As such, they’ve demanded that I remove the shirt, demanded that the image of the shirt be removed from any site I know of, demanded that I destroy any shirts that exist with the logo and demand that I not at any point in the future use the phrase in a commercially profitable way.
(Want to read ALL the demands? Download the C&D as a PDF file.) …
I suspect this is just idiotic overzealousness, but lots of bad publicity for the overreaching trademark holder can’t hurt!
–Ann Bartow
UPDATE: Some things you might not have realized about pork.
UPDATE THE SECOND: Rumors about corruption in the National Pork Board’s acquisition of “The Other White Meat” trademark! Was this an appropriate use of $60 million in taxpayer funds?
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