Clintonites Use Trademark Law to Try to Suppress Political Speech
Posted 8 hours ago by Mark Horne filed under 2016 Election, First Amendment
By trying to suppress merchandise, the Clinton-supporters have just drawn more attention to them. They are basically selling the public anti-Hillary propaganda by trying to stop that propaganda.
A “Super-PAC” has formed called “Ready for Hillary.” Naturally, they have a logo. Someone decided to spoof it and did a wonderful job!
hillary oligarchy
According to The Hill:
Instead of “I’m Ready for Hillary,” a Minnesota activist made a line of shirts declaring “I’m Ready for Oligarchy,” in the same style and with the same font as the super-PAC’s images.
Ready for Hillary ordered two online sales sites, Zazzle.com and CafePress.com, to take those down, but that demand is coming under fire.
The consumer interest group Public Citizen is coming to the design creator’s defense, and accusing the super-PAC of trying to clamp down on his constitutional right to political protest.
In a letter to the group on Monday, attorney Paul Levy wrote that “critical speech directed at a candidate for president is squarely protected by the First Amendment, hence any application of trademark law to quash such uses is highly suspect.”
The Minnesota designer, Dan McCall, sells a slew of libertarian and other political merchandise through his website.
He previously was locked in a fight with the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security for selling shirts and mugs that used the agencies seals and said things such as “Department of Homeland Stupidity.”
Public Citizen fought back against both agencies and eventually got them to drop their complaints and pay McCall’s legal fees.
In that case, as with the Ready for Hillary merchandise, Public Citizen claimed that McCall is well within his constitutional right to mock the groups, especially since the novelty items are not likely to be confused with those of the official organizations.
Of course they claimed he was well within his constitutional right. That’s the kind of thing the Constitution was written to protect!
I’m not surprised that Clinton-supporters would try to degrade the First Amendment in order to gain an advantage. But I am surprised they would do so when it was obvious that they will fail on legal grounds and that they will hurt Hillary’s reputation because they are now associating her with an attack on Free Speech.
That seems like a self-defeating way to campaign for her.
Read more at
http://politicaloutcast.com/2014/06/clintonites-use-trademark-law-try-suppress-political-speech/#bZvfRlDqueVIYjyL.99
