40withegg

UPDATE #2 - 08/28/2009: It appears that Zazzle.com does not have the same issues as CafePress, based on a couple of items I've found there (here, here, and here). Thus, my SF MUNI Satire Zazzle Store!

Update #1 - 08/27/2009: My story was picked up by the MUNI Diaries blog. Thank you for the moral support!

Many people have seen me wearing this T-shirt: black with a large, white-on-blue "N" followed by "one", which spells out "None," not "N one" or "No ne."

This is my critique of the N-Judah line, the least frequent and most packed San Francisco MUNI train line in The City. All of you J-Church people -- yes, your route sucks, too, but not as bad. Some of you also know this shirt as my CafePress.com lawsuit shirt, and while that's an exaggeration there is a story there, and here it is.

Shortly after we moved to San Francisco's Inner Sunset district, SF MUNI finalized several major renovations, including the opening of the T-Third Street line (what's that... the train line letter actually corresponds with the street name?) and major track-switching changes to accommodate the new train. Needless to say hilarity ensued, such as 1 1/2 hour waits for all trains. Frustrated, and smelling an opportunity, I set out to design sarcastic T-shirts to skewer the system updates. Here's what I came up with:

I think these logos turned out well, especially the train symbols. They should have, because I chopped them out of the official SFMTA route guide. Looking to capitalize on MUNI-bashing, I created an account on CafePress.com, uploaded my images, designed some shirts, and set the price of each to be a couple of dollars past the minimum. Next step: profit!

Not so much.

Several days and zero sales later I received a very interesting email from the Content Usage Policy department at CafePress.com, indicating that my images had been deemed "questionable" and possibly "infringing upon the rights of a thirt party."

From: "CafePress.com Content Usage Policy" cup@cafepress.com
To: me!
Subject: Pending Images in Media Basket

Dear Shopkeeper,

Thank you for using CafePress.com!

As you may know, CafePress.com provides a service to a rich and vibrant community of international users. From time to time, we review the content in our shopkeepers accounts to confirm that the content being used in connection with the sale of products are in compliance with our policies, including our Content Usage Policy (CUP).

We recently learned that your CafePress.com account contains material which may not be in compliance with our policies. Specifically, designing, manufacturing, marketing and/or selling products that may infringe the rights of a third party, including, copyrights (e.g., an image of a television cartoon character), trademarks (e.g., the logo of a company), "rights in gross" (e.g., the exclusive right of the U.S. Olympic Committee to use the "Olympic Rings"), and rights of privacy and publicity (e.g., a photo of a celebrity) are prohibited.

Accordingly, we have set the content that we believe to be questionable to "pending status" which disables said content from being displayed in your shop or purchased by the public.

You may review the content set to pending status by logging into your CafePress.com account and clicking on the "Media Basket" link. The content set to pending status will be highlighted red. Please visit our Content Usage Policy (CUP) for additional information regarding your use of the CafePress.com service. Once there, you may access our Copyright, Trademark & Intellectual Property Guidelines and FAQ's http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/help/law.aspx for more detailed information regarding Intellectual Property Rights.

We apologize for any inconvenience that the removal of your content may have caused you. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Content Usage Associate CafePress.com CUP@cafepress.com

Well, shucks! I had already searched and found many SF MUNI-themed products on CafePress.com and didn't think that this would be an issue. Plus, there are stores around San Francisco that sell shirts with the N-Judah and other MUNI symbols upon them; these stores appear to be completely unaffiliated with MUNI. So, what's the deal? I replied:

From: me!
To: cup@cafepress.com
Subject: Erroneously Flagged Images

Hello --

Several of my images from account #XYZ were erroneously flagged as 'pending'. The images are not registered or trademarked. Searching for 'muni' on CafePress.com results in over 5000 similar un-flagged images.

Thank you very much, and please contact me if you have any questions.

-- Joe

It's true! I there are no ® or ™ symbols next to the route symbols. This was the extent of my legal argument. Maybe CafePress will chill out?

Their response: release the hounds!

From: "CafePress.com Content Usage Team" cup@cafepress.com
To: me!
Subject: RE: Erroneously Flagged Images (LTK30046508507X)

Dear Joseph Moore,

Thank you for contacting CafePress.com!

In accordance with our Intellectual Property Rights Policy, Lester G. Freudlich on behalf of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority provided us with a notice stating that your use of the subway route symbols and/or other subway imagery infringes upon their intellectual property rights (trademark). Please click here for more information about intellectual property.

Accordingly, we have set the content that is alleged to infringe the rights of the third party to "pending status" which disables said content from being displayed in your shop or purchased by the public. You may review the content set to pending status by logging into your CafePress.com account and clicking on the "Media Basket" link. The content set to pending status will be highlighted red.

If you believe that you hold the rights to the content alleged to infringe the rights of the third party, we encourage you to contact the alleged rights holder directly for a resolution to this matter. Below please find the contact information for the party alleging infringement.

Lester G. Freundlich
Senior Associate Counsel
Direct telephone no: 212-878-7219
Fax no: 212-878-7398
E-Mail: Lfreundl@MTAHQ.org
347 Madison Avenue
New York, NY

My, what big Senior Associate Counsels you have! It was my understanding that artistic renditions such as mine were protected under some kind of "satire" law. Again, this is depth of my legal knowledge. As much as I love to imagine myself as the Little Guy who sticks it to The Man, I didn't press the issue and bailed on CafePress.com: I printed one (N)one shirt for myself at Zazzle.com. I don't have nearly the time nor energy to research my legal position here, and I suppose that is usually the case. Oh well.